Amazon's last-minute bid for TikTok comes as a US ban on the platform is
set to take effect Saturday
[April 03, 2025] By
AAMER MADHANI and SARAH PARVINI
WASHINGTON (AP) — Amazon has put in a bid to purchase TikTok, a Trump
administration official said Wednesday, in an eleventh-hour pitch as a
U.S. ban on the platform is set to go into effect Saturday.
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on
the condition of anonymity, said the Amazon offer was made in a letter
to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
The New York Times first reported on the bid.
President Donald Trump on Inauguration Day gave the platform a reprieve,
barreling past a law that had been upheld unanimously by the Supreme
Court, which said the ban was necessary for national security.
Under the law, TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance is
required to sell the platform to an approved buyer or take it offline in
the United States. Trump has suggested he could further extend the pause
on the ban, but he has also said he expects a deal to be forged by
Saturday.
Amazon declined to comment. TikTok did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.
The existence of an Amazon bid surfaced as Trump was scheduled on
Wednesday to meet with senior officials to discuss the coming deadline
for a TikTok sale.
Although it’s unclear if ByteDance plans to sell TikTok, several
possible bidders have come forward in the past few months. Among the
possible investors are the software company Oracle and the investment
firm Blackstone. Oracle announced in 2020 that it had a 12.5% stake in
TikTok Global after securing its business as the app’s cloud technology
provider.
In January, the artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI presented
ByteDance with a merger proposal that would combine Perplexity’s
business with TikTok’s U.S. operation. Last month, the company outlined
its approach to rebuilding TikTok in a blog post, arguing that it is
“singularly positioned to rebuild the TikTok algorithm without creating
a monopoly.”
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A TikTok logo is shown on a phone in San Francisco, Friday, Jan. 17,
2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
 “Any acquisition by a consortium of
investors could in effect keep ByteDance in control of the
algorithm, while any acquisition by a competitor would likely create
a monopoly in the short form video and information space,”
Perplexity said in its post.
The company said it would remake the TikTok algorithm and ensure
that infrastructure would be developed and maintained in “American
data centers with American oversight, ensuring alignment with
domestic privacy standards and regulations.”
Other potential bidders include a consortium organized by
billionaire businessman Frank McCourt, which recently recruited
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian as a strategic adviser. Investors
in the consortium say they’ve offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash
for TikTok’s U.S. platform. Jesse Tinsley, the founder of the
payroll firm Employer.com, says he too has organized a consortium
and is offering ByteDance more than $30 billion for the platform.
Wyoming small business owner Reid Rasner has also announced that he
offered ByteDance roughly $47.5 billion.
Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned
that ByteDance could share user data — such as browsing history,
location and biometric identifiers — with China’s authoritarian
government. TikTok said it has never done that and would not do so
if asked. The U.S. government has not provided evidence of that
happening.
Trump has millions of followers on TikTok and has credited the
trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young
voters.
During his first term, he took a more skeptical view of TikTok and
issued executive orders banning dealings with ByteDance as well as
the owners of the Chinese messaging app WeChat.
—
Parvini reported from Los Angeles.
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