The video app is barreling toward a Saturday deadline to change its ownership under federal law or face a ban in the United States.
Two days before a deadline for TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese company or otherwise face a ban in the United States, a deal has not yet been cemented but the contours of one are starting to take shape.
Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday that the administration would announce a plan for TikTok by Saturday. A federal law passed last year to resolve national security concerns related to TikTok and its Chinese owner, ByteDance, called for the app to be sold or banned in January. President Trump delayed the enforcement of that law until April 5.
Mr. Trump also met with top officials at the White House on Wednesday to consider a proposal for TikTok’s future.
While TikTok has enjoyed interest from potential buyers including Amazon, the Trump administration is eyeing a deal that would sidestep a sale of the entire company, according to four people familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The plan would be to spin out TikTok into a new company and bring on new American investors to reduce the ownership stakes of Chinese investors.
The private-equity giant Blackstone and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz are considering investments, they said. Two of the people suggested the private equity firm Silver Lake was also considering an investment. Current investors, like Susquehanna and General Atlantic, would retain a stake in TikTok, and Oracle, which processes and serves TikTok user data, would likely maintain at least an operational role in managing TikTok’s data, three of the people said.
The down-to-the-wire negotiations are nothing new for TikTok, which has repeatedly wriggled out of earlier scrutiny in the United States. The app has cemented its role as a cultural juggernaut in the country, where it has more than 170 million users.