Report: Andreessen Horowitz May Join Leading Bid to Take Over TikTok
Andreessen Horowitz is reportedly in talks to invest in TikTok as part of a bid by Oracle and other American investors that has emerged as the frontrunner among those aiming to acquire the social media app from its Chinese owner.
The venture capital firm is working to add new outside investment for the buyout, the Financial Times reported Tuesday (April 1).
Co-founder Marc Andreessen has invested in other social media platforms, including making an early investment in Facebook and contributing $400 million to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now X, according to the report.
The talks are ongoing and could end without a deal, the report said.
Saturday (April 5) is the deadline for the Chinese owners of TikTok to sell the U.S. arm to non-Chinese entities or see the app banned in the U.S., per the report.
President Donald Trump said Sunday (March 30) that TikTok will have a new owner before the deadline and there are “a lot of potential buyers” for the social media platform.
“There’s tremendous interest in TikTok,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, per Reuters.
“I’d like to see TikTok remain alive,” he added.
An earlier Reuters report said private equity outfit Blackstone could be an investor in TikTok’s American operations, as the firm was considering joining the social media platform’s Chinese parent company ByteDance’s existing non-Chinese shareholders.
Those shareholders are led by Susquehanna International Group and General Atlantic. In their plan, TikTok U.S. would be spun off into a separate entity, winnowing down Chinese ownership in the new business to under 20%, which is the threshold mandated by U.S. law.
Artificial intelligence search engine firm Perplexity said March 21 that it should become TikTok’s new owner after weeks of reports that it was interested in merging with the social media platform.
The company wrote in a blog post: “Perplexity is singularly positioned to rebuild the TikTok algorithm without creating a monopoly, combining world-class technical capabilities with Little Tech independence.”
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