Social Media App TikTok CEO quits as Walmart joins Microsoft bid for buyout
(Reuters) - Walmart Inc said it was joining Microsoft in a bid for social media company TikTok’s U.S. assets, revealing its plans hours after the video company’s chief executive said he would step down.
CEO Kevin Mayer, a high-profile former Disney executive, is leaving three months after joining TikTok, in the middle of negotiations to sell the Chinese-owned short-form video app’s U.S. operations to Microsoft Corp or Oracle Corp.
TikTok owner ByteDance aims to enter exclusive talks with a bidder in the next 24 to 48 hours and ink a deal by Sept. 15, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
ByteDance declined to comment.
The sale of TikTok is happening as the company is under fire from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump as a potential national security risk due to the vast amount of private data the app is compiling on U.S. consumers.
The Trump administration has demanded that China’s ByteDance, which owns TikTok globally, sell its U.S. operations. Earlier this week, TikTok also sued over an executive order effectively banning it in the United States.
“We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of U.S. TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of U.S. government regulators,” Walmart said in a statement.
Retailer Walmart lauded TikTok’s integration of e-commerce and advertising capabilities in other markets and said that a three-way partnership could bring that integration to the United States. The deal would help Walmart reach customers across virtual and physical sales channels and grow its online marketplace and its advertising business. Shares of Walmart rose 6%.
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