Trump elevating the heated TikTok competition to a bidding war: source
President Trump has extended the deadline for a TikTok deal — and pushed the bidding war for the social media app into overdrive.The president is known for his dealmaking and he is enjoying the jockeying, sources told me.“Trump is the ultimate decision maker,” a source close to Trump said.“He just extended the deal.
All bids are on the table.”Oracle is seen as the front-runner in part because it already hosts TikTok’s data on its servers but other tech giants, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Perplexity, are also pushing for a deal.AppLovin, the mobile technology company that provides a platform for app developers to grow their businesses, also jumped into the race for this week, and I spoke with CEO Adam Foroughi about their offer.Foroughi joins a massive list of billionaires and celebrities — ranging from Mr.
Beast to Mr.Wonderful — who have also reportedly been angling to purchase the app.
Another source told The Post that a deal with an unnamed US company to purchase the social media giant was nearly finalized this week until Trump announced sweeping new tariffs, spurring ByteDance to back out.Foroughi is partnering with casino mogul Steve Wynn on his bid, according to reports, though the two have yet to actually meet in person, the first source added.
They’re working with a consortium of additional investors to propose a deal that would join the two companies and allow TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to hold onto a 20% stake while also satisfying security concerns.The deal would be an equity merger which would mean the Chinese would benefit from a possible IPO (or any other upside).“We’re proposing a full merger, which would keep the 7,000 engineers in China employed, and it would benefit ByteDance by giving it stock and the upside of a deal,” Foroughi, who is worth an estimated $15 billion according to Forbes, told me.
“We would create a partnership with China that would benefit both of us.”As an added sweetener, ...