Source: London-based investment firm Centricus and Triller seek to buy TikTok's US, AU, NZ, and India operations for $20B; TikTok says it hasn't received a bid
Now London-based Centricus has teamed with Triller — itself a rival short-video app — to propose $20B for the US, Australia, New Zealand, and India operations with $10B up front, though TikTok says it has not actually received a bid. Two days later, sources report TikTok has already chosen a buyer at $20B-$30B, so this entry reads as a late, possibly unsolicited attempt to crash a process that was nearly closed.
First-order effects
Triller, a much smaller competitor, is attempting to leapfrog its scale problem by acquiring the very user base it has been losing to, while TikTok must vet a bid it publicly denies receiving against an imminent buyer announcement.
Second-order effects
A credible second bidder gives ByteDance leverage to push the final price above the $20B-$30B range toward the ~$50B figure its US investors cited, and forces any Microsoft-style suitor to justify paying more for a larger geographic footprint.
Third-order effects
If forced-divestiture auctions become the standard resolution for geopolitically sensitive apps, control of recommendation-driven social platforms shifts from founders to financial buyers and strategic rivals — a pattern still visible years later in reports of Blackstone weighing a minority stake in TikTok's US operations.
The trend: National-security pressure is converting Chinese-owned consumer apps into auction assets, with financial firms and strategic rivals competing to acquire their Western operations.
I'm baffled by how so little is made of the SplitTok issue: buying only part of TikTok is massively impractical unless European TikTok is going to be completely separate, with no exchange of data at all, as it would be still owned by ByteDance. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Centricus submitted a bid to Beijing-based ByteDance for TikTok's assets in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and India, and would be made up of $10 billion in cash up front and $10 billion in profit-sharing from the resulting venture: https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Centricus Asset Management is seeking to buy TikTok's U.S. operations for $20 billion, partnering with Triller, another video-based social networking app https://www.bloomberg.com/...
“The idea would be to help turn TikTok U.S. into more of an e-commerce app for creators and users, much like what current parent company ByteDance does with a similar app in China.” wild https://www.axios.com/...
TikTok's American makeover just took a bruising It's parent, ByteDance, was relying on a cast of American executives to make the case that it's not Chinese. Now, one has departed, @tculpan says https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @bopinion
Does this give China an effective veto over any TikTok sale? Or will it just drop the asking price? The algorithm is a key component of TikTok, but it isn't irreplaceable. https://twitter.com/...
Imagine selling TikTok without the “personalized content recommendations based on data analysis” to any US entity. While this protects Chinese firms from any future TikTok like scenarios, it could well mean they're selling a lemon to the US 🍋 https://twitter.com/...