Amazon Makes Last-Minute Bid to Buy TikTok

Amazon has reportedly made a last-minute play to buy all of TikTok, the wildly popular video app thats facing a US ban.

TikTok, which is bearing down on an April deadline to cut ties with its Chinese parent company or go dark in the US, is receiving multiple offers for sale, according to the New York Times.

Amazon's bid came as a last-ditch effort.

But don’t expect this to shake up the dealmaking just yet: administration officials are reportedly not taking Amazon's bid seriously.

TikTok is one of the most powerful media sources in America today, hosting around half of the American population on it's site.

The company, which hosts around 170 million US users, has grown to be one of the largest online shopping marketplaces with millions of dollars in daily sales.

Beyond an attempt to purchase an iconic brand, Amazon’s move underscores the last-minute chaos in Washington surrounding the powerful brand's future.

Amazon sent a letter to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to express their last-minute interest.

Multiple billion-dollar corporations are in the mix to snap up the video app: Oracle, Walmart, and Microsoft have all been rumored to have interest in the app.

Even popular YouTuber Mr. Beast is said to be in on the action.

The bids started rolling in after President Donald Trump defied court orders and ignored a law passed with bipartisan support.

Lawmakers from both parties have long raised national security concerns about TikTok’s Chinese ownership, passing a law last year that forced a sale set to take effect in January.

In April 2024, then-President Joe Biden's signed the bill into law.

The bill was designed to give Tiktok's parent company, ByteDance, enough time to find an American buyer.

If they failed to find a new owner, the app was supposed to go dark in the US.

And at first, it worked as planned.

ByteDance didn't agree to terms with any US-based companies and went dark for a few hours on January 19th, the day before President Trump's inauguration.

But Trump, who pushed to ban the app in his first term, had changed his stance in the past year and fought to keep the social media site operational in the US.

After his inauguration, Trump ordered tech companies to reinstate TikTok’s app sales.

His decision came after months of pressure from TikTok, which ramped up lobbying efforts and urged users to flood lawmakers’ offices with calls.

Despite the Supreme Court unanimously upholding the law, Trump delayed its enforcement until this Saturday.