New York
A board member at TikTok’s parent company said that a deal to save the app from disappearing in the United States will be done soon.
General Atlantic CEO Bill Ford, a ByteDance board member, said Wednesday that it’s in “everyone’s interest” to keep the app active. Ford made the remarks at an Axios-sponsored event in Davos, Switzerland.
“We’ll get on with it, as soon as maybe the end of the week in terms of negotiating what might work… The Chinese government, the US government and the company and the board all have to be involved in this conversation,” Ford said, adding that there could be solutions “short of divestiture.” General Atlantic is a major investor in TikTok-owner ByteDance.
One of President Donald Trump’s first acts after taking office Monday was signing an executive action that delays enforcement of the TikTok ban for 75 days. The action directs the US Justice Department not to enforce the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which passed with broad bipartisan support in Congress and was signed in April by former President Joe Biden.
The law required that starting January 19, TikTok be banned in the US unless it sells to a buyer from America or one of its allies. Trump told reporters that he would be open to the sale of only a 50% stake, and that he changed his mind on TikTok because he “got to use it.”
Trump is also talking about TikTok as a deal-making exercise, saying Tuesday that “I have the right to make a deal” and rhetorically repositioning the US law banning TikTok as a big business opportunity for the US and his tech mogul friends. Trump added that said he would be open to X owner Elon Musk or Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison taking over the app. Investor groups led by billionaire Frank McCourt and YouTuber and TikTok star Jimmy Donaldson, also known as MrBeast, also have made bids for TikTok for undisclosed sums.
For now, TikTok’s ultimate fate in America remains in doubt until a deal is made. It’s unclear that ByteDance would want to sell, even if it were a deal brokered by Trump.
