Trump Announces TikTok Has 75 Days to Secure a Buyer; Walmart Eyes Potential Acquisition

TikTok’s fate in the US will not be decided just yet. US President Donald Trump said today that he will sign an executive order that will keep the social media site running in the US for another 75 days. This is coming about amid reports of Amazon and Walmart reportedly gearing up to make bids to buy the company.

In January 2025, the US Supreme Court upheld TikTok’s ban, and the platform briefly went dark. At the time, Trump extended the deadline for TikTok to find a US buyer until April 4, and now he’s extended this again for another 75 days, ending June 18.

Today, Trump said he wants to “save TikTok” and that there has been “tremendous progress” thus far in the process of trying to find a buyer. However, he said a deal needs more time to come together, so he’s signing a new executive order that will keep TikTok online in the US for at least another 75 days.

Republicans and Democrats alike have raised concerns about national security over TikTok based on the company’s ownership by a Chinese company, ByteDance. How a potential sale of TikTok might come together remains a mystery, whether it comes as a sale of TikTok’s US operations, the platform entirely, or some other kind of deal beyond a total divestiture by ByteDance.

ByteDance is holding steady and saying over and over that it will not sell.

Who Could Buy TikTok?

If TikTok were to be sold, who might buy the company? It was previously reported that Activision founder Bobby Kotick was assembling an investment group to buy TikTok. The AI company Perplexity has also discussed a potential deal that would give the US government a 50% ownership stake in TikTok. Microsoft, meanwhile, is apparently interested in trying–again–to buy TikTok.

More recently, it emerged that Amazon and Walmart were entertaining making bids, or joining coalitions of companies in making bids, to buy TikTok. ABC News reported that Walmart was motivated to jump into the mix after Amazon, in part to obtain access to TikTok’s massive userbase that Walmart could, in theory, sell products to.

Trump’s messaging around TikTok is just the latest big story about how his policies are impacting entertainment products and services. His newly announced tariffs, for example, have led Nintendo to delay Switch 2 preorders, sparking fears that the Switch 2 could end up being more expensive than anticipated.

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