TikTok’s future in the U.S. is still up in the air. The Trump administration just gave ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, another week to figure out what to do with its impending ban. That pushes its new deadline to December 4. This is the second extension in just a few weeks.
While that’s happening, Walmart is back in the mix. The retail giant previously tried to team up with Microsoft to buy TikTok back in 2020 and is now giving it another shot, this time teaming up with Oracle, which is already on board as TikTok’s official “trusted tech partner.” Walmart sees TikTok as more than just a trending app, though. It views the social video plaform as a chance to break further into the digital space and compete with Amazon in a totally different way.
With around 100 million users in the U.S. alone, TikTok is a veritable goldmine for any company looking to mix a slice of its e-commerce business with social media. Walmart wants to tap into that by creating shopping experiences directly inside the app. Think influencers showing off products you can buy on the spot. It’s retail meets entertainment, and it’s where Walmart thinks the future is heading, much like we see ads for the TikTok Shop intermingling with your typical other, varied content.
ByteDance, for its part, is trying to ease security concerns by spinning off TikTok’s U.S. side into a new, separate company. Oracle and Walmart would get stakes in that, which might help satisfy Washington’s demands without cutting TikTok off entirely from its roots in China. But the back-and-forth is still ongoing, and data privacy remains a huge sticking point.
So for now, TikTok stays online, thanks to court rulings that have blocked an outright ban. But nothing’s set in stone. As Oracle and Walmart keep working on the deal, millions of creators and users are stuck in wait-and-see mode without an end to the saga just yet.
