We've been waiting with baited breath for a while now to find out about the future of TikTok in the United States. After condemning the Chinese owners of the app, TikTok was given the mandate to sell up in the US or miss out on the country as an audience. Since this announcement, Trump has had to delay the deadline for TikTok's sale multiple times, but the president has recently said we should find out who the new buyer is in the next two weeks.
Reuters shares a snippet of a video taken during Trump's recent interview on the Fox News program "Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo". "We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way," Trump says in the video, adding "I think I'll need probably China's approval. I think President Xi will probably do it."
When asked who the buyer is, Trump says "I'll tell you in about two weeks" and adds that the buyers are "a group of very wealthy people". It feels very reminiscent of Trump's previous comments on the subject in March when the president then said there were four groups interested, and all were very good. Realistically, we have the same amount of information now as we did then.
What we do know is that the current situation between the United States and China is bound to be interesting to watch unfold. With the U.S. cracking down on the country we're seeing tariffs as well as lawsuits around potentially smuggled Nvidia AI chips to power the country's military efforts. Between these it's no surprise China has been apprehensive about Trump's plans for its wildly popular social media app.
Hopefully we'll find out in two weeks time who this buyer is, though chances are equally good we won't. Finding out who's going to be in control of TikTok in the United States could give us some insight as to the future of the app. Speculation around potential owners has pointed to Frank McCourt, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, or a company like Microsoft to pick up the TikTok reigns.
If it's the case of the latter you can bet there'll be some Xbox integration coming to TikTok in the future. If Microsoft can release an Xbox themed Oculus Quest 3S, then I'll almost expect a black and green phone on the horizon too.
