Amazon has submitted a last-minute bid to acquire the US division of TikTok from China’s ByteDance, The New York Times reported, citing sources.
The bid was sent by letter to US Vice President J.D. Vance and the country’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The newspaper’s interlocutors note that various parties involved in negotiations to change TikTok’s ownership structure are not taking Amazon’s offer seriously.
Amazon declined to comment.
The New York Times notes that US President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with senior White House officials on 2 April to discuss the future of TikTok. A potential deal could involve new US investors entering the social network’s capital without a formal sale of the company.
In the spring of 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation that allows the social network TikTok to be banned from the country unless it is spun off from the Chinese company ByteDance, which owns it. Congressmen believed TikTok posed a threat to national security because the Chinese government could force ByteDance to hand over US users’ data to it. In April 2024, US President Joe Biden signed the document, and in January 2025, days before Trump’s inauguration, the US Supreme Court upheld the law.
After the inauguration on 20 January, Trump issued an executive order directing the US attorney general to delay the law’s entry into force for 75 days. He said that TikTok would be able to continue operating in the US on the condition that 50 per cent of shares are transferred to US companies.