Because the weekend deadline for TikTok to find a buyer approaches, bidders for the short-video social media web site are piling up.
Amazon and, individually, a consortium led by OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely are the most recent to throw their hats into the ring for TikTok. The location faces an Apr 5 deadline to achieve a deal to discover a non-Chinese language purchaser below menace of being banned from the US.
US officers have raised safety considerations over the app’s ties to China, which TikTok and proprietor ByteDance have denied. Trump administration officers are assembly on Wednesday (Apr 2) to debate the assorted choices for TikTok.
Startup Zoop, which is run by Stokely, founding father of grownup content material social media web site OnlyFans, has partnered with a cryptocurrency basis to submit a late-stage plan to bid for TikTok, the 2 informed Reuters Wednesday.
A US administration official confirmed Amazon had despatched a letter to Vice President JD Vance and Division of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Amazon declined to remark, whereas TikTok and ByteDance didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Shares of Amazon rose about 2 % following information of the last-minute TikTok bid.
Amazon has lengthy harbored ambitions for an in-house social media community that would assist it promote extra items and attraction to a youthful viewers. It purchased dwell video web site Twitch in 2014 for almost US$1 billion and e book overview web site Goodreads in 2013 as a part of its efforts to construct a viable social community.
Amazon additionally developed and examined a TikTok-like short-form video and picture feed referred to as Encourage that it shuttered earlier this 12 months.
