Why Amazon sellers and retailers are flocking to TikTok Shop despite looming U.S. ban
A file photo of a livestreamer selling handbags at a TikTok Livestreaming E-commerce Base on October 12, 2021 in Wuhan, China.
Visual China Group | Getty Images
Sporting a sparkly dress and a Santa hat atop her distinctly pink hair, Sarah Potempa stood in front of her smartphone at her hair-care company’s warehouse in Waukegan, Illinois. It was time to go to work.
Potempa is a celebrity hairstylist who goes live on TikTok multiple times a week. During “the packing show,” as she calls it, Potempa livestreams herself as she packs up orders of her viral Beachwaver curling iron for six to eight hours at a time.
The stream on Nov. 20 had a party atmosphere, with Potempa taking breaks to dance to “In Da Club” by 50 Cent in between shipping out orders. To the more than 1,000 TikTok users who typically tune in for Potempa’s shows, this is entertainment and shopping all at once.
Beachwaver is part of a growing influx of retailers that are flocking to TikTok Shop, the video app’s shopping service. TikTok Shop launched in September 2023 as a way for users to purchase products without leaving the app, and since then, the China-owned app has emerged as a viable alternative for retailers looking to diversify their e-commerce business from Amazon.
Via a dedicated Shop tab, retailers big and small promote products of all kinds, ranging from eyeshadow palettes, phone chargers, detox teas, treadmills and more. On TikTok, retailers typically offer generous coupons and free delivery within a few days. Shoppable posts, which look like normal videos but are ads for products sold in TikTok Shop, frequently appear in TikTok’s main video feed, known as the “For You” page. Those posts allow users to purchase products without exiting their For You feed.
On Potempa’s show, shoppers race to place an order to get a 50% discount on Beachwaver products and free add-ons to their order like face washes or lipsticks, along with the chance to have their username read aloud by Potempa while she packs their order on screen.
“When TikTok Shop was new and people hadn’t used it yet, they would ask, ‘Is this on Amazon yet?'” Potempa said in an interview. “I would get those questions like, ‘Can I buy it somewhere else?’ Now that it’s been around for a year or so, we’ve done 1.2 million orders.”
ByteDance-owned TikTok has already cemented itself as an advertising powerhouse, and with TikTok Shop, the company has been trying to carve out another revenue stream through e-commerce. The company has attracted the likes of Nike, PacSun and Crocs, among others. Those retailers want to tap into the more than 170 million Americans on TikTok who shop on impulse as they scroll through videos.
They aren’t the only ones.
Amazon sellers are also being persuaded to try out the service with promises of low fees and steep discounts on products footed by TikTok. Besides sellers, the company has also hired talent away from Amazon, filling key roles for TikTok Shop in areas like marketing, creator relationships, brand safety, category managers and operations.
In the 15 months since its launch, TikTok Shop has emerged as a “massive e-commerce machine,” according to ecommerceDB, a market research firm. EcommerceDB predicts TikTok Shop will more than double its gross merchandise volume, or the dollar value of items sold on its marketplace, to $50 billion this year. That’s a fraction of Amazon’s 2024 expected GMV of $757 billion, but nonetheless, TikTok Shop is making strides.
“Every time you scroll, every other scroll is a Shop post, so they’re making a lot of investment to encourage that in-app conversion,” said Caila Schwartz, Salesforce’s director of consumer insights and strategy for retail and consumer goods.
Amazon spokesperson Mira Dix told CNBC in a statement that sellers are engaging with its store “more than ever before” and seeing greater success. Dix said the company’s services for sellers are optional, such as fulfillment, which costs “an average of 70% less” than comparable two-day shipping alternatives.
“Our selling partners are incredibly important to Amazon, and we work hard to innovate on their behalf and support the growth and success of these businesses across all of their sales channels,” Dix said.
Beachwaver CEO Sarah Potempa hosts livestreams on TikTok Shop multiple times a week.
Looming deadline
TikTok’s e-commerce push comes at a precarious moment for the company.
In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If TikTok fails to cut ties with its parent company, app stores and internet hosting services would be prohibited from offering the app, amounting to a nationwide ban in the U.S. TikTok has sued to block the measure.
President-elect Donald Trump could rescue TikTok from a potential U.S. ban. After trying to implement a TikTok ban during his first administration, Trump reversed his stance, acknowledging in a March interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad” with the app. Trump changed his position around the time that he met with billionaire Jeff Yass, who is a major investor in ByteDance.
As the January deadline grows nearer, TikTok has largely been operating its business as usual.
Executives from TikTok Shop pitched its marketplace as a holiday shopping destination during an October event in Manhattan with business owners and social media influencers. Users have shopped hundreds of millions of units on its e-commerce platform since launching September 2023, said Nico Le Bourgeois, TikTok Shop’s head of U.S. operations. Le Bourgeois, who joined TikTok in August 2023, previously spent nearly nine years at Amazon in a variety of divisions including its third-party marketplace.
TikTok Shop isn’t trying to sell “everything to everybody,” Le Bourgeois told CNBC in October. TikTok Shop is a marketplace for product discovery that surfaces “new, cool, interesting” items from big and small brands, he added.
“You see it, you like it, you buy it. It’s not a search,” he said. “It’s a very different way of shopping.”
Le Bourgeois declined to comment on the looming TikTok ban, but a company spokesperson at the event said TikTok Shop isn’t slowing down.
“The sellers here, creators, they’re building their livelihoods on TikTok,” the spokesperson said. “We’re going to continue to show up for that. There’s a huge opportunity for us.”
‘Enjoying it while it’s hot’
More Americans are expected to turn to TikTok and other China-linked apps for gift buying this holiday shopping season.
Roughly 63% of Western consumers plan to purchase from Chinese shopping apps during the season, according to Salesforce. That includes TikTok, Alibaba’s AliExpress, Shein, Temu and fast-fashion company Cider.
On Saturday, TikTok said its U.S. Black Friday sales topped more than $100 million, with home goods, fashion and beauty products among the most popular categories. Canvas Beauty, a top seller of hair-care and beauty products on TikTok Shop, hit $1 million in sales within two hours of going live on the app, the company said.
Retailers and sellers, some of which count TikTok for the lion’s share of their online sales, told CNBC that they’re sticking with the platform despite the possibility that it could disappear.
Although it’s impossible to ignore the conversation around a potential TikTok ban in the U.S. as a brand that heavily relies on the platform, Yay’s Snacks co-founder and COO Rachel Cheng said she’s not convinced that TikTok will go away under the Trump administration because it doesn’t seem to be the president-elect’s main focus.
Yay’s Snacks, which makes crispy Cambodian beef jerky, was one of the earliest companies to join TikTok Shop when it launched. Yay’s founder and CEO Marlin Chan, a former YouTuber, frequently posts humorous TikTok videos promoting his snacks, which are based on his grandmother’s original recipe. Among the videos is a series that parodies the show “Undercover Boss.” Those videos helped Yay’s amass tens of thousands of TikTok followers, who keep buying the jerky, Cheng said.
At one point, TikTok sales comprised nearly 90% of Yay’s total revenue, with monthly sales from the app peaking at $75,000 last November, Cheng said. Yay’s is prepared to divert to Amazon and its own website if TikTok is banned, but as long as TikTok is “still here, we’re going to do what we can to stay on top,” Cheng said.
“If we were sitting here worrying about what’s next, we would’ve never gotten on TikTok Shop,” Cheng said. “We’re enjoying it while it’s hot.”
Craig Sjodin/ Disney ABC Television Group/ Getty Images
Competing with Amazon
Scrub Daddy, known for its smiley face-shaped sponges, went viral on TikTok during the Covid pandemic and counts more than 4 million followers. Its top video, a demonstration of its Damp Duster sponge, has 30 million views while its bestselling product on TikTok Shop has been purchased nearly 76,000 times, according to the app. That figure doesn’t account for items that have been returned after purchase.
After kicking off in 2012 with an appearance on “Shark Tank,” Scrub Daddy CEO Aaron Krause said he lost faith in traditional marketing efforts.
“We did a TV ad, we did some outdoor ads on billboards, we did a little bit of radio,” Krause said. “All I found was that I was throwing money into the air.”
The company pivoted toward social media marketing, primarily on Instagram, which turned out to be a “pot of gold,” Krause said. Scrub Daddy set up an account on TikTok in 2020 and worked with influencers to promote its products, including Vanesa Amaro, a popular account for housecleaning content with more than 5.7 million followers. After Amaro recommended the sponges to her viewers, Scrub Daddy sold 30,000 units in one weekend, Krause said.
TikTok’s “algorithm just allows you to hit millions and millions of views with one hysterically crazy video,” he said.
In recent months, TikTok has encouraged retailers and sellers to host hourslong livestreams multiple times per week as a way to connect with shoppers. Many brands have invested in building out their own studios to record the shows or have hired talent to host them.
Scrub Daddy snatched up longtime QVC host Dan Hughes after he was laid off from the home shopping company in 2023. Others, like Beachwaver, have turned their CEOs into on-screen talent.
TikTok Shop was a big topic of conversation at a conference for Amazon sellers in New York in October. A session on “how to scale your brand” with TikTok Shop drew a packed room of sellers who listened to e-commerce strategist Rafay MH talk up the potential for brands to haul in $8 million to $10 million in sales from TikTok in less than a year.
“Amazon comes with a ton of competition,” MH said. “TikTok is the opportunity for free eyeballs and sales.”
Many Amazon sellers have embraced TikTok after they were initially slow to join the platform, said Michelle Barnum Smith, who provides consulting services to online businesses.
“I was the bedraggled gold miner standing on the street corners of New York, saying ‘There’s gold in those hills,’ and people were like, ‘Yeah, sure,'” Barnum Smith said “But as soon as they started seeing their competition on there, or their buddy on there, they were like, ‘I’ve got to get on there.'”
There’s now “extreme FOMO,” or fear of missing out, among Amazon sellers to join TikTok even if it no longer exists in the U.S. next year, Barnum Smith said.
“Whatever the future looks like for TikTok Shop, they’re happy to take that money now and get while the getting’s good,” Barnum Smith said.
Correction: Vanesa Amaro is a TikTok influencer. An earlier version misspelled her name.
Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.
Technology
‘Robotaxi has reached a tipping point’: Baidu, Nvidia leaders see momentum as competition rises
Chinese tech company Baidu announced Monday it can sell some robotaxi rides without any human staff in the vehicles.
Baidu
BEIJING — Chinese robotaxi companies are expanding abroad at a faster clip than U.S. rivals Waymo and Tesla — at a time when industry leaders say autonomous driving is finally near an inflection point.
“I think robotaxi has reached a tipping point, both here in China and in the U.S.,” Baidu CEO Robin Li said Tuesday on an earnings call, according to a FactSet transcript.
“There are enough people who have [had the] chance to experience driverless rides, and the word of mouth has created positive social media feedback,” he said, noting that the wider public exposure could speed up regulatory approval.
His comments echoed similar notes of optimism in the last few weeks from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Xpeng Co-President Brian Gu — who reversed his previously cautious stance after faster-than-anticipated tech advances. Xpeng is launching robotaxis in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou next year.
It’s a global market with significant growth potential, likely worth more than $25 billion by 2030, according to Goldman Sachs’ estimates in May.
To seize that opportunity, Chinese companies are aggressively expanding overseas and claim they are close to making robotaxis a viable business, rather than simply burning cash to grab market share.
In the last 18 months, Baidu, Pony.ai and WeRide landed partnerships with Uber that allow users of the ride-hailing app to order a robotaxi in specific locations, starting in the Middle East.
Such tie-ups “will be critical to success” as they enable robotaxi companies to operate more efficiently and reach profitability more quickly, said Counterpoint Senior Analyst Murtuza Ali.
Once we can generate profit for every single car in a second-tier city [like Wuhan] in mainland China, we can generate profits in lots of cities across the world.
Halton Niu
General manager for Apollo Go’s overseas business
Expanding on experience at home
Baidu says that since late last year, its Apollo Go robotaxi unit has reached per-vehicle profitability in Wuhan, where the company has operated over 1,000 vehicles in its largest deployment in China.
That means ridership is enough to offset a Wuhan taxi fare that’s 30% cheaper than in Beijing or Shanghai, and far below prices in the U.S. or Europe. Besides developing autonomous driving systems, Baidu has also produced electrically-powered robotaxi vehicles — without relying on a third-party manufacturer — that are 50% cheaper.
“Once we can generate profit for every single car in a second-tier city [like Wuhan] in mainland China, we can generate profits in lots of cities across the world,” Halton Niu, general manager for Apollo Go’s overseas business, told CNBC.
“Scale matters,” he said. “If you only deploy, for example, 100 to 200 cars in a single city, if you only cover a small area of the city, you can never become profitable.”
How U.S. rivals stack up
Scale remains the dividing line. In the U.S., Alphabet-owned Waymo operates more than 2,500 vehicles and is expanding rapidly from major cities in California to Texas and Florida, with plans to enter London next year, following its first overseas venture in Tokyo.
Tesla sells its electric cars in China, and reportedly showed off its Cybercab in Shanghai this month. But it began testing its robotaxis in Texas only in June, and this week obtained a permit to operate in Arizona.
Amazon’s Zoox is also ramping up its expansion in the U.S., but has not released overseas plans.
The three companies have not disclosed plans to break even on their robotaxis.
Baidu Apollo Go’s Niu did not rule out an expansion into the U.S. But for now, the robotaxi operator plans to enter Europe with trials in parts of Switzerland next month, following their expansion in the Middle East this year.
Abu Dhabi last week gave Apollo Go a permit to charge fares to the public for fully driverless robotaxi rides, which are operated locally under the AutoGo brand, eight months after local trials began in parts of the city.
But Chinese startup WeRide said it received a similar permit on Oct. 31 to charge fares for its fully driverless robotaxi rides in Abu Dhabi, and claimed that removing human staff from the cars would allow it to make a profit on each vehicle.
That puts Pony.ai furthest from profitability among the three major Chinese robotaxi operators. Its CFO Leo Haojun Wang told The Wall Street Journal in mid-September that the company aimed to make a profit on each car by the end of this year or early next year.
Pony.ai plans to launch a fully autonomous commercial robotaxi business in Dubai in 2026, after receiving a testing permit in late September. The company plans to roll out in Europe in the coming months and has also outlined an expansion into Singapore.
Pony.ai and WeRide are set to release quarterly earnings early next week.
“Currently, companies like Waymo, Baidu, WeRide and Pony.ai are leading in terms of fleet size, which positions them advantageously in the race for profitability,” said Yuqian Ding, head of China Autos Research at HSBC.
Scale and safety
Fleet size is becoming a competitive marker. Pony.ai reportedly said it plans to release 1,000 robotaxis in the Middle East by 2028, while WeRide aims to operate a fleet of 1,000 robotaxis in the region by the end of next year.
Niu said Apollo Go operates around 100 robotaxis in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and plans to double its vehicle fleet in the next few months.
“Apollo Go has had a head start with significantly more test rides than the other two,” Kai Wang, Asia equity market strategist at Morningstar, said in an email. “The more testing and data you can collect from trips taken, the more likely the AI sensors are able to recognize the objects on the road, which means better safety as well.”
He cautioned that despite some initial progress, the robotaxi race remains uncertain as “no one has truly had mass adoption for their vehicles.”
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Coverage remains limited. Even in China, robotaxis are only allowed to operate in selected zones, though Pony.ai recently became the first to win regulatory approval to operate its robotaxis across all of Shenzhen, dubbed China’s Silicon Valley. In Beijing, self-driving taxis are mostly limited to a suburb called Yizhuang.
Anecdotally, CNBC tests have found Pony.ai offered a smoother ride than Apollo Go, which was prone to hard braking.
As for safety — which is critical for regulatory approval — none of the six operators has reported fatalities or major injuries caused by the robotaxis so far. But Apollo Go and Waymo have begun advertising low airbag deployment rates.
Even if that’s not enough to convince regulators worldwide, Beijing is expected to ramp up support at home.
HSBC’s Ding predicts the number of robotaxis on China’s roads could multiply from a few thousand to tens of thousands between the end of this year and 2026, a shift that would give operators more proof that their model works.
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In the weeks leading up to Nvidia’s third-quarter earnings report, investors debated whether the markets were in an AI bubble, fretting over the massive sums being committed to building data centers and whether they could provide a long-term return on investment.
During Wednesday’s earnings call with analysts, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang began his comments by rejecting that premise.
“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” Huang said. “From our vantage point we see something very different.”
In many respects, Huang’s remarks are to be expected. He’s leading the company at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom, and has built its market cap to $4.5 trillion because of soaring demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units.
Huang’s smackdown of bubble talk matters because Nvidia counts every major cloud provider — Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle — as a customer. Most of the major AI model developers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Meta, are also big buyers of Nvidia GPUs.
Huang has deep visibility into the market, and on the call he offered a three-pronged argument for why we’re not in a bubble.
First, he said that areas like data processing, ad recommendations, search systems, and engineering, are turning to GPUs because they need the AI. That means older computing infrastructure based around the central processor will transition to new systems running on Nvidia’s chips.
Second, Huang said, AI isn’t just being integrated into current applications, but it will enable entirely new ones.
Finally, according to Huang, “agentic AI,” or applications that can run without significant input from the user, will be able to reason and plan, and will require even more computing power.
In making the case of Nvidia, Huang said it’s the only company that can address the three use cases.
“As you consider infrastructure investments, consider these three fundamental dynamics,” Huang said. “Each will contribute to infrastructure growth in the coming years.”
Reversing the slide
In its earnings release, Nvidia reported revenue and profit that sailed past estimates and issued better-than-expected guidance. Last month, Huang provided a $500 billion forecast for sales of the company’s AI chips over calendar 2025 and 2026.
The company said on Wednesday that its order backlog didn’t even include a few recent deals, like an agreement with Anthropic that was announced this week or the expansion of a deal with Saudi Arabia.
“The number will grow,” CFO Colette Kress said on the call, saying the company was on track to hit the forecast.
Prior to Wednesday’s results, Nvidia shares were down about 8% this month. Other stocks tied to the AI have gotten hit even harder, with CoreWeave plunging 44% in November, Oracle dropping 14% and Palantir falling 17%.
Some of the worry on Wall Street has been tied to the debt that certain companies have used to finance their infrastructure buildouts.
“Our customers’ financing is up to them,” Huang said.
Specific to Nvidia, investors have raised concerns in recent weeks about how much of the company’s sales were going to a small number of hyperscalers.
Last month, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet all lifted their forecasts for capital expenditures due to their AI buildouts, and now collectively expect to spend more than $380 billion this year.
Huang said that even without a new business model, Nvidia’s chips boost hyperscaler revenue, because they power recommendation systems for short videos, books, and ads.
People will soon start appreciating what’s happening underneath the surface of the AI boom, Huang said, versus “the simplistic view of what’s happening to capex and investment.”
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