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 faces an April deadline to cut ties with its Chinese parent company or get banned in the US, is receiving multiple offers for sale, according to the New York Times.
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.
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.
Amazon sent a letter to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to express their last-minute interest.
Amazon’s move underscores the last-minute chaos in Washington surrounding the powerful brand’s future.
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.
Trump, who puched to ban the app in his first term, has changed his stance and fought to keep the social media site operational in the US.
In April 2024, the Congress and Senate sent a bill to then-President Joe Biden that was supposed to take the app down from app stores.
TikTok went dark for a few hours on January 19th, the day before President Trump’s inauguration.
But TikTok turned up the heat on lawmakers, asking app-users to call into their representative’s office and spending millions on lobbying efforts.
And President Trump responded to the company’s pleas.
He delayed enforcement of the law until this Saturday, even after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld it.
Lawmakers from both parties have long raised national security concerns about the app’s Chinese ownership, passing a law last year that forced a sale set to go into effect in January.