Technology reporter<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The list of would-be buyers for TikTok in the US – both rumoured and confirmed – has grown longer as the deadline for deciding its future looms.<\/p>\n The social media giant faces being shut down in the US unless it sells to an American company by 5 April.<\/p>\n The runners and riders range from US tech giants to the British entrepreneur dubbed “the king of homemade porn”.<\/p>\n However, TikTok and its Chinese owner, ByteDance have still not confirmed they are willing to do a deal.<\/p>\n They also continue to reject the reason for the sale – that the US considers their ties to the Chinese government a national security threat.<\/p>\n It is also not clear what exactly would be sold, in particular what would happen to TikTok’s algorithim, which decides what content to expose users to, and is considered a big reason for its success.<\/p>\n “TikTok without its algorithm is like Harry Potter without his wand – it’s simply not as powerful,” said Kelsey Chickering, principal analyst at Forrester Research.<\/p>\n Despite all this uncertainty, Ms Chickering said it was unlikely the app would go offline in the US as it briefly did in January<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It is highly unlikely that TikTok will go dark again. All signs point to a deal or another extension.”<\/p>\n Vice President JD Vance told Fox News on Thursday that the Trump administration was set to announce a deal ahead of the Saturday deadline.<\/p>\n “I think that we’re in a good place. We’re going to keep on working at it,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As with everything else to do with the app’s future, who exactly is attempting to buy it is cloaked in uncertainty.<\/p>\n According to the New York Times<\/a>, Amazon recently sent a letter to the US Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick expressing interest.<\/p>\n Amazon declined to comment when approached by BBC News. <\/p>\n Another late-stage bid reportedly came from an app marketing and analytics company called AppLovin.<\/p>\n They have remained similarly tight-lipped on the speculation, though – at least in public. <\/p>\n A third last-minute bidder includes the man once called “the king of homemade porn” by the Sunday Times<\/a> – British OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely.<\/p>\n His proposed bid – and all the media attention which comes with it – happens to coincide with the relaunch of a company he co-founded in 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One confirmed bidder is Perplexity, an AI search startup which counts Amazon’s Jeff Bezos among its backers.<\/p>\n The company recently published its “vision”<\/a> for what its version of TikTok would look like for America.<\/p>\n Another potential investor is Frank McCourt, who founded the Project Liberty organisation in 2021, which aims to give more power to internet users. <\/p>\n He says he would scrap the current algorithm in favour of a far more open version where users have more control over what they see on the platform.<\/p>\n Also part of this bid are Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n According to the Financial Times<\/a>, a consortium of American businesses is close to getting US government endorsement for a bid – though of course it is up to ByteDance, not the White House, whether they sell or not.<\/p>\n The group includes Trump loyalist Marc Andreessen and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.<\/p>\n Oracle already handles the data for TikTok in the US.There are a number of other potential bids which have been mentioned by Donald Trump when he has been asked.<\/p>\n He has said, in responses to questions from reporters, that Elon Musk may be interested in getting hold of TikTok, and has also mentioned Microsoft<\/a> in the past.<\/p>\n![\"Getty](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/e55f\/live\/72b13f60-1067-11f0-93d7-a3dd8019c0be.jpg.webp\")
Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nLast-minute bids<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
A bid from MrBeast?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n