Amazon Submits Last-Minute Offer to Buy TikTok
With the April 5 TikTok-ban deadline looming, U.S. tech giant Amazon has submitted a last-minute offer to purchase TikTok from Chinese company ByteDance.
Written by Aleksander Hougen (Co-Chief Editor)
Reviewed by Jackie Leavitt (Co-Chief Editor)
Last Updated:
The news comes from reporting from the New York Times, which has been in contact with sources close to the matter. The offer reportedly came in the form of a letter addressed to U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
It’s notable that the offer to purchase the app went to the White House rather than the Chinese company itself. Neither Amazon nor ByteDance have responded to reporters’ requests for comments on the issue.
Policymakers and tech giants have been scrambling ever since President Trump extended the TikTok ban (formally the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act), which was signed into law by President Biden last year. The law demanded that ByteDance sell TikTok to another company, or face a complete ban in the U.S.
Further, the law gave the executive branch the power to extend the deadline for up to 90 days, an option President Trump used to issue a 75 day extension on January 19, 2025, a day after the app was taken off app stores in the U.S.
Since then, there’s been many reports of interested buyers, but very little that indicates that ByteDance is actually interested in selling TikTok. With just days left until the 75 day extension expires, it remains an open question what is going to happen.
Some reports indicate that meetings are taking place behind closed doors in Washington to work out a compromise deal that falls short of an outright sale, but this could very well prove to be in violation of the original law signed last year.
No matter what happens with TikTok in the next few days, it’s sure to cause some reverberations in the tech sector, and for social media as a whole. We’ll be covering the story as it continues developing, so be sure to check back over the following days if you’re wondering what will happen to the popular video platform.