TikTok stand at Web Summit (Noushad Thekkayil/Getty Images)

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Amazon’s surprise bid for TikTok is far from a sure deal, because TikTok is far from just a social media app

The e-commerce duo would dominate the social shopping marketplace, and that’s the issue.

4/2/25 2:46PM

Amazon’s surprise bid for TikTok isn’t just about snagging the world’s most viral app — it’s about teaming up with the leader of social commerce. TikTok has become a goldmine for businesses of all sizes, with the app now boasting over 15 million merchants worldwide. Last year, 47.2 million Americans bought something through TikTok Shop, while an estimated 40% of all online US shoppers made a purchase through social media altogether.

Amazon, already a retail powerhouse that recently surpassed Walmart in revenue, could tap into TikTok’s viral popularity to boost visibility, expand its customer base, and drive up sales. With a market cap just north of $2 trillion, Amazon is one of the few contenders that could ante up the estimated $40 billion to $50 billion needed to buy TikTok’s US operations. Amazon’s not the only that sees TikTok’s value: on Wednesday, former home shopping giant QVC Group announced its first-ever 24/7 live shopping streams on TikTok.

Still, despite the obvious upsides, Amazon’s reported bid for TikTok has already drawn some scrutiny online, with one post saying, “An eCommerce giant buying an eCommerce giant (which is what TikTok is at this point) would, in most administrations, raise a few eyebrows.”

It wouldn’t be the first time a partnership between Amazon and TikTok has caught the eye of lawmakers. In November, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party warned Amazon that an in-app shopping partnership with TikTok was “dangerous and unwise,” citing national security concerns over the app’s potential risks.

President Trump is set to meet with top White House aides Wednesday to discuss TikTok’s future before the app’s divest-or-ban deadline on Saturday.

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OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

OpenAI Anthropic ARR race — Sherwood News

A business that scales with the value of intelligence

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

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