Microsoft Could Reportedly Purchase TikTok from $10 Billion to $30 Billion within few Weeks, Ahead Of the September 15, 2020 Deadline

Microsoft will reportedly pay an estimated amount of up to $30 billion to acquire the United States operations of TikTok from the Chinese company- ByteDance. On Wednesday, CNBC reported that Microsoft is planning to finish the company’s acquisition talks with ByteDance-owned TikTok within the upcoming three weeks. This deal could be worth between $10 billion and $30 billion.

ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, is holding discussions with several United States tech companies including Microsoft, as the company scrambles to find a company that could purchase the operations of TikTok in the United States. TikTok’s parent company needs to hammer out a deal to sell the company’s United States operations by September 15 of this year. If the company fails to meet the Sep 15 deadline, Donald Trump, the United States President, states that he will instate a nationwide ban on the TikTok application.

Last week, news broke that President Donald Trump was weighing an executive order to ‘divest’ the Unites States operations of TikTok. Microsoft has emerged as the frontrunner in ByteDance-owned TikTok discussions, and the company has confirmed over the weekend that Microsoft was looking to acquire the operations of TikTok in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Microsoft is considered the leading candidate to acquire TikTok, and it is the only company that has publicly announced its interest to purchase TikTok. On Sunday, the company confirmed in a blog post that Microsoft has talked with ByteDance to purchase the company’s business in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.

Only a few tech companies could afford to purchase TikTok since the app has been valued as a whole from $30 billion to $50 billion, reports claim. The United States is one of the largest markets of TikTok.


According to the report published by CNBC, Microsoft has already agreed with the United States government to migrate over all of ByteDance-owned TikTok’s engineering and backend code within the next year. It is worth noting that the majority of TikTok’s engineering and backend code is based at the China headquarters of ByteDance.

Microsoft, the second-most valuable tech company across the world, also stated as part of the deal that it is considering to invite other US investors to purchase minority stakes in the portion of the TikTok business.


Photo: Solen Feyissa

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