Walmart, Microsoft join forces in a bid to buy TikTok at a $20 billion to $30 billion price range

As the day goes by, the future of TikTok’s presence in the US is becoming more uncertain. With less than 20 days to go, Microsoft and other big tech companies are reportedly competing to buy the TikTok’s U.S. operations. Other bidders competing with Microsoft, the main one being Oracle. Netflix and Twitter have also been named as potential buyers. In any case, deal talks between the parties “morphed into a big, messy, political soap opera,” according to the report.

Now, Walmart is reportedly putting its hat into the ring to buy the ByteDance-owned TikTok. According to the latest report from Reuters, Walmart is reportedly joining forces with Microsoft in a bid for social media company TikTok’s U.S. assets. The retail giant revealed its plans immediately after the social media company’s chief executive, Kevin Mayer, said he would step down.

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

In the meantime, ByteDance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming said in a separate letter reviewed by Reuters that the company was “moving quickly to find resolutions to the issues that we face globally, particularly in the U.S. and India.” He added that the outgoing CEO, Mayer, had joined just as the company was “entering arguably our most challenging moment.”

“It is never easy to come into a leadership position in a company moving as quickly as we are, and the circumstances following his arrival made it all the more complex,” Zhang said.

According to multiple sources, the deal is estimated to range from $20 billion to $50 billion depending on which bits of the company are sold. Earlier this month, CNBC also reported that Microsoft was discussing a $10 billion-$30 billion range.

In early August, President Trump signed an executive order banning US transactions with owners of TikTok and WeChat in 45 days. President Trump’s executive order will bar transactions with its parent company starting in 45 days. In a statement, President Trump said:

“WeChat, a messaging, social media, and electronic payment application owned by the Chinese company Tencent Holdings Ltd., reportedly has over one billion users worldwide, including users in the United States. Like TikTok, WeChat automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”