With the deadline for TikTok’s separation from its Chinese parent company ByteDance looming ahead, three more companies have joined the race — tech giant Amazon, app development company AppLovin, and social media startup Zoop.
Amazon sent an offer letter to Vice President J.D. Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to buy all of TikTok, however according to a New York Times report, the Trump administration isn’t seriously considering this bid.
READ: TikTok might ‘go dark’ on Jan. 19, Supreme Court likely to uphold app ban (January 11, 2025)
Applovin, a mobile tech platform that helps developers market and monetize apps submitted a bid and spoke to real estate billionaire Steve Wynn about funding it, per The Wall Street Journal. The company, which is valued at around $100 billion, pitched its offer to the Trump administration as a way to create jobs and address national security issues. The company specifically told the Trump administration that it could address security issues with TikTok if it owned the app.
The race to find a new owner for TikTok has been on since the Supreme Court decided to uphold a law that required TikTok to divest from ByteDance for its U.S. operations, citing security concerns, with a ban on the social media platform to be imposed on failure to do so. Indeed, Tiktok had gone dark for 24 hours on Jan. 19 because of this, however that ended when President Donald Trump signed an executive order giving the company an additional 75 days to find a buyer and now, that April 5 sell-or-divest deadline nears. Trump met with White House officials Wednesday to discuss a framework to keep TikTok in operation before Saturday’s deadline.
Tim Stokely, the founder of OnlyFans, has also made a last-minute proposal to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations from ByteDance. The bid was submitted by Zoop, a social media startup co-founded by Stokely and RJ Phillips, who serves as CEO and has experience in influencer marketing. The proposal also involves The Hbar Foundation, a cryptocurrency company. Zoop describes the bid as a “David vs. Goliath” challenge against major social media platforms, aiming to champion a creator-first revolution by offering improved revenue sharing and putting more power in the hands of creators, according to a statement shared with WIRED.
READ: US Supreme Court votes in favor of TikTok ban (January 17, 2025)
Several others have been in the talks to acquire TikTok, including the AI company Perplexity, and billionaire and former L.A. Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, who teamed up with Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian to submit a $20 billion bid in January. Tech company Oracle had emerged as a frontrunner, with its proposal being discussed in the Trump administration in March. “There will almost certainly be a high-level agreement that I think satisfies our national security concerns,” Vice President J.D. Vance said, in an interview with NBC news.