Walmart & Microsoft team up in the race to become TikTok's American parents
So many TikTok headlines... So little time. Bytedance-owned TikTok could choose its new American parent in less than 48 hours. ICYMI: earlier this month, President Trump said he would ban TikTok in the US on national security concerns due to its ownership by China's Bytedance. Then Microsoft revealed it was trying to buy TikTok's US operations, and Trump agreed such a deal would avert the ban. He gave Microsoft until September 15 to strike a deal. But wait, there's more:
- Last week, Corporate software giant Oracle revealed it was also in advanced talks to buy TikTok's US operations.
- On Wednesday, TikTok's new CEO Kevin Mayer quit. LinkedIn update: 23 years at Disney...3 months at TikTok. Womp.
- Yesterday, Walmart came out of left field, saying it's teaming up with Microsoft to make a joint bid for TikTok.
Make (or break) Your Day... It's a high-stakes, $30B race against time to become TikTok's American parents. TikTok has been downloaded over 2B times and 100M Americans used it in the past month. This deal would also include ownership of TikTok's Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand-ian(?) operations. Together, Walmart/Microsoft could monetize TikTok's massive userbase to rival Facebook's ad biz. But more importantly...
This is really about Amazon... Amazon is Walmart's biggest competitor in retail and ecommerce. It's also Microsoft's sworn enemy in the cloud computing race. Walmart uses Microsoft's cloud service to avoid giving Amazon's AWS any more dominance. It's also launching Walmart+, a $98/year membership to rival Amazon Prime. Walmart could leverage TikTok's massive ecommerce and advertising reach to sell ads to its suppliers and sell its own products.