TikTok Still Doesn’t Have a Buyer

The clock is ticking on a TikTok sale… and yet nobody at parent company ByteDance seems to care.

We’re now less than one month away from the April 5 sale-or-ban deadline President Trump gave TikTok when he granted a 75-day extension upon arriving back at the White House in January. And last week, Axios reported that ByteDance hasn’t even held negotiations with any prospective buyer yet. So what is going to happen to everyone’s favorite time-waster-slash-hypothetical-apocalypse-level-national-security-threat?

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Make no mistake: ByteDance may be refraining from taking offers, but there are plenty of buyers still licking their chops. Last week, Wyoming billionaire and noted Trump supporter Reid Rasner floated a $47.5 billion bid for the app. He joins a list of suitors that includes Frank McCourt, Oracle, Microsoft and… the US government? That’s right: The Trump administration has floated the idea that its proposed US sovereign wealth fund could take a significant stake in the app.

And yet, ByteDance isn’t biting yet. One possible reason? Even a nearly $50 billion offer may be a significant undervaluing of the app. At least, that’s what a few recent clues would suggest:

• Last week also delivered a batch of unsealed documents from a lawsuit against the company in Washington state, which revealed that its TikTok Live e-commerce platform generated $1.7 billion in sales in a single quarter in 2023, including $400 million from the US. TikTok projects annual sales to reach $77 billion by 2027.
• ByteDance last week also launched a new share-buyback program for US employees, offering to buy shares at almost $190 a pop — up from a $181 per-share offer six months ago — which would value all of ByteDance at around $315 billion.

Meanwhile, back in February, Bloomberg reported that some American investors in ByteDance are arguing that the company doesn’t need its US unit at all — given that its presence in China accounts for 80% revenue and most of its growth.

Another reason for the stalled sale talks? Even this extended deadline — which, remember, the Trump administration had no legal basis in ordering in the first place — appears pretty loose. On Thursday last week, the president said he’d “probably” extend the deadline if a deal is not hammered out in time. Given that the administration’s rollout of tariffs hasn’t exactly been firm, swift or smooth, it’s possible ByteDance is simply playing deadline chicken.

Waiting in the Wings: TikTok’s biggest competitors, meanwhile, have been a beehive of activity as the app sits in legal limbo. YouTube integrated its video-generating AI model into Shorts in February. And, according to a report from The Information in late February, Instagram is considering spinning out Reels — a.k.a., the platform’s TikTok-esque vertical video feature — into its own separate app. Rest assured, one way or another, we’ll all be able to keep wasting an hour or two of our lives, one 90-second video at a time. We love the smell of freedom in the morning here at The Daily Upside.