By Princewill Okike
President Donald Trump said this weekend that four different groups are currently in talks with his administration to buy the Chinese-owned social media platform. With TikTok’s future existence in the U.S. still up in the air,
According to a report by Reuters, Trump said there “could” be a deal.
“We’e dealing with four different groups, and a lot of people want it…all four are good,” Trump told reports aboard Air Force One on Sunday, but did not clarify with details about the potential offers.
Due to the law passed by the Biden administration earlier this year, and Trump’s executive order seeking to delay TikTok’s expiration/sell-off date by 75 days, the ByteDance-owned app has less than one month until a decision must be made to either sell or rid the platform for 170 million American users.
The April 5 deadline is not official, however. Trump’s extension of a selloff was not technically legal, so a further extension could also be a possibility. There is also a proposal from Sen. Markey (D-Mass.) to push back the deadline by another 270 days.
The President’s vague admission of four potential buyers comes days after Axios reported that there had not been any negotiations between ByteDance and the prospective buyers, and that Beijing has been more or less silent.
“Everyone has ideas of how a deal could be structured, but no confidence on how it needs to be structured,” Axios stated.
Along with Perplexity AI and a group called “The People’s Bid for TikTok” — which includes Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, billionaire Frank McCourt, YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast), Oracle and Microsoft — there is a growing pool of possible buyers.
In addition, Trump signed an executive order last month to create a sovereign wealth fund that could also become TikTok’s new potential buyer, with former Morgan Stanley tech banker Michael Grimes leading the charge.
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