Business

US Billionaires Ready to Buy TikTok, Trump Claims
By Reuters | 29 Jun, 2025

Trump claims to have found a group of wealthy people ready to buy the Chinese-owned TikTok video app's US business to prevent it from being shut down.

A general view of the offices of TikTok, as the site faced an April 5 deadline to reach a deal to find a non-Chinese buyer under threat of being banned from the United States, in Culver City, California, U.S., April 2, 2025. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo

U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Fox News interview broadcast on Sunday that he had found a buyer for the TikTok short-video app, which he described as a group of "very wealthy people" whose identities he will reveal in about two weeks.

Trump made the remarks in an interview on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo" program. He said the deal he is developing would probably need China's approval to move forward and he predicted Chinese President Xi Jinping would likely approve it.

The U.S. president earlier this month had extended to September 17 a deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the U.S. assets of TikTok despite a law that mandated a sale or shutdown without significant progress.

A deal had been in the works this spring that would have spun off TikTok's U.S. operations into a new U.S.-based firm, majority-owned and operated by U.S. investors, but it was put on hold after China indicated it would not approve it following Trump's announcements of steep tariffs on Chinese goods.

"We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way," Trump said. "I think I'll need probably China's approval. I think President Xi will probably do it."

A 2024 U.S. law required TikTok to stop operating by January 19 unless ByteDance had completed divesting the app's U.S. assets or demonstrated significant progress toward a sale.

Trump, who credits the app with boosting his support among young voters in last November's presidential election, has extended the deadline three times.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Scott Malone, Aidan Lewis and Paul Simao)