President Trump Hints a TikTok Buyer Will Emerge by April 5

TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, still needs to find a buyer for the U.S. segment of the app or face a ban come this weekend. However, President Donald Trump is confident a deal will be made in time.

A non-Chinese buyer needs to take over TikTok by Apr. 5. If not, the short-video app could go dark permanently, cutting off about 170 million users.

“We have a lot of potential buyers,” said President Trump, per Reuters. “There’s tremendous interest in TikTok.”

The future of TikTok became cloudy after U.S. government officials deemed the app a national security threat. They alleged TikTok captured personal user data and shared it with the Chinese government. As such, a 2024 federal law mandated ByteDance to divest itself from the app.

Jan. 19 was the original deadline for ByteDance to get rid of TikTok. While the app did go temporarily dark on that date, the incoming Trump administration said it would extend the deadline. Once Trump officially took office, the deadline was moved to Apr. 5.

Buyers of TikTok

There certainly seems to be a diverse pool of investors looking to buy TikTok. From major social media influencers to investor groups, President Trump appears to be correct, there appears to be a lot of interest in buying the social media platform.

Private equity company Blackstone is a seemingly interested party. According to insiders, Blackstone is reportedly looking at making a minority investment in the app’s U.S. operations. The deal would also allegedly involve Susquehanna International Group and General Atlantic.

Artificial intelligence developer Perplexity may also want a piece of TikTok. In January, the AI company purportedly sent a proposal to ByteDance suggesting a merger deal.

Even YouTube influencer MrBeast, also known as James Donaldson, is getting in on the action. Partnered with employer.com founder Jesse Tinsley, Donaldson offered to take TikTok U.S. off ByteDance’s hands.

Project Liberty, an organization founded by former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, purportedly sent an offer to TikTok’s owner. According to President Tomicah Tillemann, the group has received monetary commitments from various investors amounting to about $20 billion to fund a deal.

Whether TikTok’s new owner will be one of these big players is yet to be seen. However, according to the Trump administration, we could see some sort of deal by the end of the week.