Apple and Google removed TikTok from their app stores Saturday night, complying with a law requiring China’s ByteDance to divest the social app or see it face an effective ban in the U.S.
The Apple App Store and the Google Play store’s removal of TikTok means people in the U.S. can no longer download the popular short-form video app on their devices. The app’s delisting comes after the Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Bidensigned in April. TikTok on Friday said its service would go dark, meaning it would stop working for Americans, unless the Biden administration intervened.
On Apple’s App Store, a message saying “App Not Available” appears on TikTok’s former app-install page.
“This app is currently not available in your country or region,” the message said.
“We’re sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server,” said a message on the page the previously hosted TikTok on the Google Play store.
Some users who visited TikTok’s app and website on Saturday were greeted with a message that said, “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now.”
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now,” the notice said. “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
Lemon8, another service owned by ByteDance, also displayed a notice letting users know it wasn’t available in the U.S. The app had shot up the charts recently, becoming one of the most popular free apps on iOS.
“Sorry, Lemon8 isn’t available right now,” the notice states.
TikTok halted service of its app in the U.S. on Saturday.
The law requires that service providers no longer support TikTok within the U.S. if ByteDance failed to carry out a “qualified divestiture” of the app by Sunday. As a result, Apple, Google and Oracle could face tough penalties for failing to adhere to the law. Apple and Google previously distributed the app through its app stores while Oracle provides cloud computing services to TikTok and said in June that the law would hurt its business.
After the Supreme Court’s decision, TikTok CEO Shou Chew said use of TikTok is a First Amendment right and added that over 7 million American businesses use it to make money and find customers.
Awaiting Trump
“Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to ensure our platform thrives as your online home for limitless creativity and discovery as well as a source of inspiration and joy for years to come,” Chew said in a TikTok video.
Chew also thanked President-elect Donald Trump, who previously asked the Supreme Court to pause the law’s implementation and allow his administration “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.” Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration in Washington on Monday, along with tech leaders from companies including Meta, Amazon, Apple and Google.
Trump arrived in Washington Saturday evening. His transition team did not immediately respond to the TikTok shutdown. Trump on Friday said that the Supreme Court’s decision was expected “and everyone must respect it.”
“My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!” Trump wrote in a post on his social media app Truth Social.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Saturday acknowledged TikTok’s statement that it would go dark and characterized it as a “stunt.”
“We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration,” Jean-Pierre said. “So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.”
Trump told NBC News on Saturday that he would “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day extension of the Sunday deadline, and that he would “probably announce” a decision on Monday.
“I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at,” Trump said in the phone interview. “The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation.”
Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI on Saturday submitted a bid for TikTok that would result in the AI-powered search engine startup combine with TikTok’s U.S. operations and new capital partners, CNBC reported.
Businessman Frank McCourt’s internet advocacy group Project Liberty announced on Jan. 9, that it had submitted a proposal to buy TikTok from ByteDance at undisclosed terms. McCourt told CNBC on Friday that “we, I believe, are the only bidder” that meets the necessary criteria of disentangling the technology from the Chinese algorithm.
Anduril, the defense-tech startup founded by Palmer Luckey, has signed a term sheet to raise capital at a $28 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company is planning to raise up to $2.5 billion in the round, said the people who asked not to be named because the details are confidential. The latest funding would double Anduril’s valuation from August.
Anduril, the three-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company that ranked No. 2 in 2024, aims to disrupt traditional defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman by developing its own products and selling them to clients, in contrast to the traditional military process of contracting and then building.
An Anduril spokesperson declined to comment.
Luckey, who sold virtual reality company Oculus to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014, has been a public supporter of Donald Trump since long before the president’s return to the White House.
“I’ve been on the tech-for-Trump train for longer than just about anyone,” Luckey, who started the company in 2017, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime” on Nov. 6, right after Trump’s election victory. “The idea that we need to be the strongest military in the world is really non-partisan.”
It’s part of a broader and controversial trend of AI companies walking back bans on military use of their products and entering into partnerships with defense companies and the U.S. Department of Defense. In December, Anthropic and Palantir announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services to “provide U.S. intelligence and defense agencies access” to Anthropic’s AI models.
While Anduril is still privately held, Palantir, which sells software and services to defense agencies, is publicly traded and has been one of the best performers on the stock market in the past year, jumping 370% over that stretch, lifting its market cap past $250 billion. The company reported in its latest earnings report this week that government revenue jumped 45% from a year earlier to $343 million.
Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is leading the latest Anduril financing, with a $1 billion commitment, sources said, the largest check ever for the firm. Thiel, who was a major Trump supporter in the 2016 campaign, is one of Palantir’s co-founders. Trae Stephens, a partner at Founders Fund, is an Anduril co-founder.
Anduril’s revenue in 2024 doubled to about $1 billion and annual contract value reached $1.5 billion, the people said.
In 2023, Anduril launched several new drones that rely on its Lattice AI-powered command and control software used by the U.S. military and allies to direct human-assisted robotics systems to perform complex missions.
The New York Stock Exchange with a Hims & Hers Health banner is pictured in the Manhattan borough of New York City.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters
Hims & Hers is facing scrutiny from lawmakers over what they claim is a “misleading” advertisement for its weight loss offerings that’s slated to run during the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) wrote a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday expressing concerns over an “upcoming advertisement” that “risks misleading patients by omitting any safety or side effect information when promoting a specific type of weight loss medication.”
The Hims & Hers ad, which the company released online in late January, is called “Sick of the System” and sharply criticizes the $160 billion dollar weight loss industry. It shows visuals of existing weight loss medications known as GLP-1s, including injection pens that look like Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic.
The ad claims those drugs are “priced for profits, not patients,” and points to Hims & Hers’ weight loss medications as “affordable” and “doctor-trusted” alternatives.
“We are complying with existing law and are happy to continue working with Congress and the new Administration to fix the broken health system and ensure that patients have choices for quality, safe, and affordable healthcare,” a Hims & Hers spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.
The senators do not mention Hims & Hers by name in their letter, but they do reference some of the visuals in the ad, including “imagery of an injection pen with distinctive characteristics reflective of an existing brand-name medication.”
“Nowhere in this promotion is there any side effect disclosure, risk, or safety information as would be typically required in a pharmaceutical advertisement,” the senators wrote. “Further, for only three seconds during the minute-long commercial does the screen flash in small, barely legible font, that these products are not FDA-approved.”
Hims & Hers began offering compounded semaglutide through its platform in May after launching a new weight loss program in late 2023. Semaglutide is the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, which can each cost around $1,000 a month without insurance.
Shares of Hims & Hers jumped over 170% last year, thanks to soaring demand for GLP-1s. They rose another 8% on Friday, lifting the company’s market cap to about $9.5 billion.
Compounded GLP-1s are typically much cheaper and can serve as an alternative for patients that are navigating complex supply hurdles and spotty insurance coverage. Hims & Hers sells compounded semaglutide for under $200 a month.
The FDA doesn’t review the safety and efficacy of compounded products, which are custom-made alternatives to brand drugs designed to meet a specific patient’s needs. Compounded products can also be produced when brand-name treatments are in shortage.
Semaglutide is currently in shortage, according to the FDA.
Sens. Durbin and Marshall said that advertisements for brand-name GLP-1 medications include “significant risk disclosures to patients about side effects and contraindications, including warnings about potential gallbladder, pancreas, vomiting, diarrhea, and other implications.”
A release on Durbin’s website says that the ad in question appears to exploit a loophole “regarding promotions of compounded drugs by telehealth companies.”
The senators said they believe the FDA may have the authority to take enforcement actions against marketing that could mislead patients, and they plan to introduce new legislation to address regulatory loopholes.
Employees package and sort express parcels at an e-commerce company on Nov. 1, 2024, around the Double 11 Shopping Festival in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province of China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday that puts a pause on his closing of the de minimis trade exemption, a provision commonly used by Chinese e-commerce companies Temu and Shein.
The order states that de minimis will be restored for small packages shipped from China, “but shall cease to be available for such articles upon notification by the Secretary of Commerce to the President that adequate systems are in place to fully and expediently process and collect tariff revenue” on those items.
Trump on Saturday suspended the exemption as part of new tariffs that include an additional 10% tax on Chinese goods. The nearly century-old exception, known as de minimis, has been used by many e-commerce companies to send goods worth less than $800 into the U.S. duty-free, creating a competitive advantage.
It was predicted that its removal could overwhelm U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees, as the mountain of low-value shipments already making their way into the U.S. would suddenly require formal processing.
De minimis has helped fuel an explosion in cheap goods being shipped from China into the U.S. CBP has said it processed more than 1.3 billion de minimis shipments in 2024. A 2023 report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found that Temu and Shein are “likely responsible” for more than 30% of de minimis shipments into the U.S., and “likely nearly half” of all de minimis shipments originate from China.
Critics of the de minimis provision say it’s provided an unfair advantage to Chinese e-commerce companies, and created an influx of packages that are “subject to minimal documentation and inspection,” raising concerns around counterfeit and unsafe goods.
The Biden administration proposed a new rule last September to curb the “overuse and abuse” of de minimis. The rule proposes to strengthen the CBP’s information collection requirements for de minimis shipments.