The September 15th deadline is nearing and TikTok is yet to finalize a deal with either Oracle or Microsoft to sell their app’s operations in U.S., Canadian, Australian and New Zealand. Now, Walmart has expressed their interest in partnering with Microsoft to acquire TikTok’s operations.
The deadline of September 15th, 2020 was put in place by the U.S. Government, after which TikTok will no longer be able to operate in the U.S. under its current owner, ByteDance. Due to this, Microsoft has been advancing their talks to ensure a deal with TikTok before September 15th.
TikTok is expected to finalize their buyer by next week and while the price has not been fixed, people with knowledge of the matter estimate TikTok’s valuation somewhere between $20 billion to $30 billion.
Walmart released a statement regarding their interest in partnering with Microsoft:
The way TikTok has integrated e-commerce and advertising capabilities in other markets is a clear benefit to creators and users in those markets. We believe a potential relationship with TikTok U.S. in partnership with Microsoft could add this key functionality and provide Walmart with an important way for us to reach and serve omnichannel customers as well as grow our third-party marketplace and advertising businesses. 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.