Amazon Places Bid For TikTok Ahead Of US Sale Deadline

(RTTNews) - As the April 5 deadline is looming for TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance Ltd, to find a buyer or to face shutdown in the United States, its biggest market, Amazon has entered the picture, submitting a takeover bid to the White House for the business, reports said.

With this, the tech major joins the list of potential bidders including private equity firm Blackstone and mobile technology company AppLovin Corp., among others, for the popular short video app used by over 170 million Americans.

The New York Times reported that Amazon submitted the bid through a letter to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

The development comes as the U.S. President Donald Trump was briefed Wednesday on a framework to keep the video-sharing app operational. Trump gave ByteDance until Saturday to divest its U.S. TikTok business to a non-Chinese buyer. Trump reportedly has named Vance and national security adviser Michael Waltz to lead the ongoing White House-led discussions to identify a non-Chinese buyer for the social media app.

Meanwhile, ByteDance is yet to confirm its plans about TikTok or talks with any potential buyers.

TikTok, once valued at $60 billion, has been in news since last year after then-President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation forcing ByteDance to decide on the business.

Under the U.S. law, Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, TikTok was to be banned in the U.S. starting January 19 on national security grounds unless Chinese owned ByteDance sells it to a non-Chinese buyer or one of its allies.

After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision to ban, the popular short-video sharing app had started disabling services in the country.

However, weeks after the app went dark, TikTok started restoring its services after Trump, prior to his inauguration, assured to revive its access, stating that he found the app to be fair and useful in appealing to young voters.

After taking office on January 20, Trump signed an executive order seeking to delay the enforcement of the law by 75 days. "Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok, but with the approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars - maybe trillions," Trump had said earlier.

ByteDance now has time till Saturday to take a decision on TikTok that would keep it online.