A major shareholder of Bytedance, the Beijing-based owner of TikTok, said Wednesday he was confident that a deal will be reached to ensure the video-sharing app stays online in the US — and suggested there may be options “short of divestiture” on the table.
TikTok received a lifeline this week from President Trump, who issued an executive order delaying enforcement of a national ban by 75 days while China-based ByteDance seeks an American buyer. The app remains online after a brief shutdown last weekend.
Bill Ford, CEO of ByteDance shareholder General Atlantic who also sits on the TikTok parent’s board of directors, said “it’s in everybody’s interest” to hammer out an agreement following Trump’s order.
“We’ll get on with it, as soon as maybe the end of the week in terms of negotiating what might work,” Ford told Axios during an event at the annual World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland.
“The Chinese government, the US government and the company and the board all have to be involved in this conversation.”
Ford also said there might be terms “short of divestiture” that would satisfy US authorities, but did not elaborate.
He also placed blame on the Biden administration for not “engaging with us on a real dialogue” before the Jan. 19 divestiture deadline.
The Chinese government, which long vowed to block any forced sale of TikTok, changed its tune this week and signaled the company should be allowed to explore a potential deal.
General Atlantic and Blackrock are among multiple institutional investors that collectively own a 60% chunk of ByteDance. The company says that its executives and employees each own 20%.
President Trump has vowed to “save TikTok” and said he wants the US to receive a 50% ownership stake in the app as part of a joint venture, though the exact details of his plan remain vague.
On Tuesday, Trump said he would be open to his close adviser Elon Musk, who already owns the social media platform X, making a bid to buy TikTok.
Trump also invited Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison, whose company is a cloud computing partner for TikTok, to get involved.
Other potential buyers include a joint bid floated by billionaire Frank McCourt and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary, who have said they have $20 billion in commitments as part of a plan to buy the TikTok brand and rebuild its algorithm from scratch on US soil.
Another group that includes YouTube star Jimmy “Mr. Beast” Donaldson and Employer.com CEO Jesse Tinsley is also looking to buy TikTok.
Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said he is interested in investing in TikTok but said he had paused any bid to buy the app outright, while ex-Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick also was said to be exploring an acquisition in recent months.
Any buyer would face an uphill battle to meet the criteria of the bipartisan-pushed law, which requires China to divest ownership of TikTok due to concerns about national security. China hawks, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), have said any link to the Chinese Communist Party would need to be entirely eliminated.
US lawmakers and the federal government say that TikTok is effectively a spying and propaganda tool capable of mass data collection and influencing public opinion through its algorithm.
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law two days before the deadline, rejecting ByteDance’s argument that it violated the First Amendment.
As The Post reported, TikTok remains unavailable in app stores operated by major tech firms Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
Under the divestiture law, US companies that facilitate access to TikTok face fines of $5,000 per user. That would amount to as much as $850 billion, given TikTok’s American user base of 170 million.
