Walmart teams up with Microsoft for TikTok bid as Donald Trump puts pressure on ByteDance

Walmart is partnering with Microsoft in the software maker’s bid for ByteDance-owned TikTok, the world’s largest retailer said on Thursday.

ByteDance has been in talks to sell TikTok’s North American, Australian and New Zealand operations, which could be worth US$25 billion to US$30 billion to companies including Microsoft and Oracle, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

US President Donald Trump has demanded that China’s ByteDance, which owns TikTok globally, sell its US operations, citing potential national security risk due to the vast amount of private data the app is compiling on US consumers.

“We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of US TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of US government regulators,” the retailer said in a statement.

The two companies are two years into a five-year partnership as part of the retailer’s push for wider use of cloud and artificial intelligence.

Walmart said TikTok’s integrated e-commerce and advertising capabilities in other markets “is a clear benefit to creators and users in those markets”.

White House adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday the Trump administration did not have a view on who buys TikTok’s operations.

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“We’re just waiting to see what the private sector comes up with,” Kudlow said in an interview with POLITICO.

“We don’t have a view of who’s better or who’s worse.”