Amazon has made a last-minute offer to buy TikTok days before President Donald Trump’s Saturday deadline, according to reports.
The online retail giant offered to acquire the social media platform Wednesday in a letter addressed to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the New York Times reported.
Those involved in talks to find a new owner for the app do not appear to be taking the bid seriously, the outlet reported.
Amazon declined to comment when contacted by The Independent.
Days before Trump took office in January, the Supreme Court upheld a law forcing the short-form video app beloved by 170 million users to either divest from its China-based parent company ByteDance or face a ban in the United States due to national security concerns. On his first day in the White House, the president signed an executive order granting a 75-day reprieve to allow his administration to“determine the appropriate course of action.” That deadline Saturday (April 5).
Now, his administration is finalizing plans for a long list of potential investors and venture capital firms that includes investment management company Blackstone and software giant Oracle, CBS News reported.
Trump and other officials — including Vance, Lutnick, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — are set to hold a meeting on Wednesday in the Oval Office to discuss the app’s future, the outlet reported.
The details of the final proposal are not immediately clear.
“We have a lot of potential buyers. There’s a lot of interest in TikTok. The decision is going to be my decision,” the president said over the weekend. “I’d like to see TikTok remain alive.”
If a deal is not reached by April 5, Trump has suggested he would extend the deadline. He’s even suggested lowering tariffs on goods imported from China if Beijing agrees to sell the app.
A number of deals have been put forward in recent months.
Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI proposed merging with ByteDance in January, the Associated Press reported. The proposal would have allowed the federal government to own up to a 50 percent stake in the new company.
Kevin O’Leary, a businessman of Shark Tank fame, and Frank McCourt, an entrepreneur and founder of Project Liberty, also made a formal offer to buy the social media platform in January. The pair, alongside a group of investors, promised to “to collect less data on users.”
Also that month, MrBeast, a YouTuber sensation whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, made a bid, alongside a group of investors, to preserve the app. The details of the offer were not made public at the time.
“I just got out of a meeting with a bunch of billionaires,” he said on the app. “TikTok, we mean business…We have an offer ready for you, we want to buy the platform, America deserves TikTok.”
Last month, Oracle “accelerated” talks with the White House about purchasing the app, Politico reported. The company would oversee American users’ data and ensure the Chinese government doesn’t have access to it, a source familiar with the discussions told the outlet.
“We’re hearing a lot of confidence from the Trump administration about getting a deal done by the deadline, which is odd considering how little we know about the specifics and how complicated the terms are likely to be,” Damian Rollison, director of market insights at SOCi, said in a statement shared with The Independent. “If ByteDance was willing to divest TikTok in the U.S., why didn’t they make a deal months ago when they were in a better position to dictate terms?”
Rollison added that he believes the app won’t be banned in the U.S.: “Regardless, I think it’s fairly safe to place bets on TikTok remaining available to U.S. users in one form or another, which will be welcomed as positive news by its large and still growing audience, who utilize TikTok for everything from connecting with friends to following the news and shopping for products.”
The Independent has asked the White House for comment.
