The prospective buyer of TikTok’s American operations, referenced by former President Donald Trump, is the same investor group—including Oracle Corp., Blackstone Inc., and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz—whose previous bid stalled amid US-China trade tensions, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Trump revealed in a Sunday interview that he had identified a buyer for the popular social media app, owned by Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd., but stopped short of naming the group. He added that the sale’s completion would depend on approval from the Chinese government, including President Xi Jinping.
“We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way. I think I’ll need probably China approval and I think President Xi will probably do it,” Trump said in a pre-recorded interview with Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. “It’s a group of very wealthy people.”
A source familiar with the talks confirmed that the buyers cited by Trump were the same consortium involving Oracle and Blackstone that nearly finalized a deal with ByteDance in April. However, the agreement was halted after China withheld approval in response to the US president’s decision to impose sweeping tariffs.
That potential deal would have allowed new outside investors to own 50% of TikTok’s US business through a unit spun off from ByteDance. Current US investors would hold about 30%, reducing ByteDance’s stake to just under 20%, meeting US security law ownership requirements. Oracle was set to take a minority stake and provide security assurances for user data.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that discussions with China were ongoing “at the highest level.” She added, “We have another 90-day extension, and it’s just to continue to work out this deal and make sure that TikTok stays on for the American people.” Blackstone declined to comment, while representatives from Oracle, Andreessen Horowitz, ByteDance, and TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s remarks come days after the US and China signed an agreement easing trade tensions that had escalated after he imposed tariffs as high as 145% on Chinese imports. The recent accord lowered tariffs to 30% and promised the resumption of shipments like ethane, jet engines, and chip-design software, contingent on China lifting some rare earth export barriers. However, it left unresolved whether China would drop objections to ByteDance’s sale of TikTok.
When asked about the buyers Trump mentioned, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning reiterated China’s principled stance on TikTok-related issues during a press briefing in Beijing, adding she had nothing further to say.
Under a law signed by then-President Joe Biden last year, ByteDance was ordered to divest TikTok’s US unit by January 19 or face a ban due to national security concerns. The company has resisted selling a lucrative business valued between $20 billion and $150 billion, depending on deal terms and included technology.
Trump has extended the deadline three times to allow more time for a deal that would save TikTok’s US operations from shutdown. His latest extension lasts through mid-September, and he said in Sunday’s interview he would reveal the buyers group “in about two weeks.”
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