American multinational technology company, Amazon, has reportedly submitted a last-minute bid to take over the operations of social media platform, TikTok, in the United States.
Although sources close to the negotiations revealed that Amazon’s bid is not being taken seriously by key parties, reports claimed that US national security concerns are driving the current negotiations.
The sources said the most likely option would be for ByteDance’s current US investors to transfer their holdings into a brand-new, independent international TikTok business.
This development comes weeks after social media platform, Snapchat, owned by Snap Inc., declared that it is benefiting from the uncertainty surrounding the future of ByteDance-owned TikTok.
Snapchat Chief Executive, Evan Spiegel, said during Snap’s fourth-quarter earnings call that the company was, however, not drawing too many conclusions regarding the increase of engagement on its platform due to the uncertainty surrounding TikTok.
“We’re not trying to draw too many conclusions from some of the engagement lift we saw when [TikTok] went dark for that brief period of time. I would say that the overall environment of uncertainty is benefiting our business,” Spiegel said.
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