President Donald Trump wants a U.S. investor to take a major stake in ByteDance’s TikTok. Several parties are in contention even as potential buyers face a litany of legal hurdles and barriers.

After stepping in to restore TikTok in the U.S. and delaying a law that would effectively ban the app, Trump is looking for avenues to keep the popular platform afloat.

He has put forward a proposal for an American stakeholder to buy the company and then sell a 50% stake to the U.S. government, which will jointly run the app along with the private party. 

So, who are the likely contenders for one of the most popular apps in the U.S.?

The world’s richest person is leading Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, has close business ties to China and has voiced opposition to the TikTok ban. 

Bloomberg reported earlier this month that the Chinese government was considering a plan to have Musk acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations, citing anonymous sources. That followed a report from the Wall Street Journal, which claimed TikTok’s CEO had been soliciting advice from Musk ahead of Trump’s inauguration. 

CNBC was unable to reach Musk for comment. 

“Elon Musk continues to be front and center as a potential bidder for TikTok which likely includes some tech partners/outside investors to get a deal done,” Wedbush said in a research note on Wednesday. 

“Musk would be hand picked by Beijing and his ironclad relationship with Trump would make this a very logical choice in our view,” the note added. 

Nat Schindler, an analyst at Scotiabank, also noted that Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has demonstrated his interest in global social media platforms. However, he also sees some potential obstacles for the tech tycoon. 

“Musk is under fire already for owning X and the perception that he is using it to promote certain political ideas, and any involvement in TikTok could draw additional fire and potentially antitrust scrutiny,” Schindler said. 

Trump has also said he’d “like” to see Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison purchase the platform.

Ellison, a longtime Trump supporter, stood beside the President at a press conference on his AI infrastructure investment plans on Tuesday, where Trump was asked questions about a potential TikTok deal. 

“What I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, buy it, and give half to the United States of America. Half and we’ll give you the permit,” Trump said before turning to Ellison to ask if the deal sounded reasonable.

“Sounds like a good deal to me Mr. President,” Ellison replied. 

Ellison and his company are currently at the center of the TikTok dilemma, operating as a cloud infrastructure provider for ByteDance in the U.S.

Given its existing relationship with Tiktok, Oracle and is “directly invested in Tiktok’s success in the region,” Scotiabank’s Schindler said. 

Ellison had bid for Tiktok, along with Walmart, back in 2020 when Trump first pushed for a ban on the platform. Neither company responded to CNBC’s request for comment. 

Trump had approved of the Walmart-Oracle deal in principle, which would’ve seen the tech and retail giants partner to take over the video-sharing app in the U.S., avoiding a shutdown. However, the Trump administration’s attempt to ban TikTok in the U.S. fell through in the face of legal challenges.

Ellison later joined a group of investors that helped Elon Musk buy social media platform Twitter, now known as X, in 2022. 

“[We believe] Oracle/Ellison could play a pivotal role in any deal given their key technology partnership with TikTok and his appearance at the White House with Project Stargate,” Wedbush said.

Wedbush added that it expects a slew of TikTok bids to come over the coming weeks from a host of players with Musk and Ellison leading the pack.

He added that potential suitors are likely to include some of America’s largest social media and technology players, such as Meta and Google, in addition to Musk’s X. 

Meta and Google didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC inquiry.

Sarah Kreps, the director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, however, warned that players such as Meta, Google and Musk getting a substantial stake in TikTok could raise antitrust questions.

Scotiabank analyst Nat Schindler noted that there were also a number of other players, including existing investors BlackRock, Coatue, and General Atlantic, who own a large chunk of TikTok’s parent company. According to him, some of these investors are likely to participate in any sale of the U.S. platform by investing in the new entity.

“Other large VCs, hedge funds, and asset managers from Tiger to Fidelity would also likely show interest in a fast growing global platform with such a huge viewer base,” said Schindler, adding that finding investors to own a part of Tiktok won’t be a problem.

In one video, the internet personality claimed he had an official offer ready, jesting that he might be the new TikTok CEO. 

Media reports have also mentioned Donaldson and a group of investors preparing to make a bid for TikTok. 

On Thursday, Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesperson for Donaldson, told CNBC that “Several potential buyers are in ongoing discussions with Jimmy, but he has no exclusive agreements with any of them.”

O’Leary told CNBC last year that he wanted to buy the platform at a discount as any possible deal won’t include TikTok’s original algorithm. The organization said it already has a replacement for the algorithm to use for TikTok U.S. 

Following Trump’s comments on a 50% stake in the platform, both McCourt and O’Leary told CNBC this week that they were interested in a TikTok deal and were hoping to work with Trump to make it happen. 

McCourt has also told CNBC that he wants TikTok to run a decentralized social networking protocol, or DSNP, overseen by the Project Liberty Institute, a nonprofit founded by the billionaire.

Bidding interest aside, a number of legal and tech experts have told CNBC that Trump’s executive order to delay the TikTok ban contradicts the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling to uphold the PAFACA and could face legal opposition.

O’Leary also told CNBC on Monday that a TikTok deal could not happen under the current law, after the Supreme Court upheld an impending ban on TikTok under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, or PAFACA, on Sunday. 

Beijing and its pending negotiations with Trump regarding trade with the U.S. is also expected to play a determining factor in whether the Chinese government would allow ByteDance to make a divestiture.

“In this game of high stakes poker between the Trump Administration and Beijing it’s clear TikTok is a big chip on the table,” Wedush said

Cloud communications software maker Twilio on Thursday issued a hopeful profit forecast for the next few years.

The company sees its adjusted operating margin widening to between 21% and 22% in 2027 as part of a three-year framework for guidance. That’s higher than Visible Alpha’s 19.68% consensus. Twilio’s adjusted operating margin in the most recent quarter was 16.1%.

Twilio revealed its new guidance at a Thursday investor event. There, the company’s executives also committed to generating $3 billion in free cash flow over the next three years, compared with approximately $692 million in free cash flow for 2022, 2023 and 2024. The Visible Alpha consensus for Twilio’s 2025 through 2027 was $2.76 billion.

The company’s stock price rose more than 10% in extended trading after the company released its presentation for the event.

If 2024 was about rebuilding Twilio’s foundation, 2025 is all about execution, CEO Khozema Shipchandler told CNBC ahead of the company’s investor day.

“If we execute well in 2025, I think we write our own story from 2026 on,” said Shipchandler, who joined Twilio as finance chief after 22 years at GE in 2018 and replaced co-founder Jeff Lawson as CEO in January 2024.

Twilio, which sends text messages and emails for customers, did not issue a revenue growth target for 2027 at its Thursday event.

Management on Thursday also provided guidance for 2025. It called for $825 million to $850 million in free cash flow and the same amount in adjusted operating income, with 7% to 8% revenue growth year over year. The Visible Alpha consensus was $814 million in adjusted operating income and about $808 million in free cash flow. The 2025 revenue forecast was in line with LSEG consensus.

Over 9,000 AI companies are already building on Twilio services. That includes OpenAI, which in December announced the 1-800-CHATGPT service that draws on Twilio voice tools.

“We want to be able to take a bunch more of those, as well as large enterprises on,” Shipchandler said. “We’re kind of open season on both.”

Shareholder input influenced a reorganization that included a 17% workforce reduction in early 2023, and activist investors Anson Funds and Legion Partners Asset Management agitated for a sale of Twilio or one of its business units, CNBC reported.

Since activist investor Sachem Head Capital Management won a Twilio board seat last April, Twilio’s stock has jumped about 81%, as revenue growth has accelerated and losses have narrowed.

Twilio has an opportunity to show double-digit growth in 2025 and beyond, Mizuho analysts said in a note earlier this month. The analysts have the equivalent of buy rating on the stock.

By expanding into new areas, such as conversational artificial intelligence, Twilio says it can sell into a $158 billion total addressable market by 2028, compared with $119 billion when only focusing on the communications and customer data platform categories.

The company doesn’t believe acquisitions will be necessary to reach its new total addressable market, a spokesperson said.

Twilio’s preliminary results for the fourth quarter show 11% revenue growth, with adjusted operating income that exceeds the top end of the $185 million to $195 million range that the company issued in October. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected 7.9% revenue growth, and according to Visible Alpha, the adjusted operating income consensus was about $190 million.

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Google on Thursday blamed a “data error” after users reported that former President Joe Biden was missing from the company’s search results.

Users on Wednesday noticed that results for search queries that included “US Presidents,” “United States Presidents” and “US Presidents in order” did not include Biden, who concluded his four-year presidential term on Monday. Users reported seeing a list of presidents ranging from George Washington to President Donald Trump. Some users posted screenshots of their results showing how the lists omitted Biden.

CNBC tried searching for U.S. presidents on Wednesday night and also encountered the results that omitted Biden. The company restored Biden to its results on Thursday.

“There was a brief data error in our knowledge graph,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement to CNBC on Thursday. A knowledge graph is a broad term used to describe a system that holds connected information. “We identified the root cause and resolved it quickly.”

The mistake comes after Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo to employees on Election Day in November, asking them to remember that people turn to the company’s services for “high-quality and reliable information.”

“Whomever the voters entrust, let’s remember the role we play at work, through the products we build and as a business: to be a trusted source of information to people of every background and belief,” Pichai wrote. “We will and must maintain that.”

Google’s Biden omission error comes as the company undergoes a turbulent period that has included several product mishaps and global scrutiny.

“It’s not lost on me that we are facing scrutiny across the world,” Pichai said in a December all-hands meeting first reported by CNBC. “It comes with our size and success. It’s part of a broader trend where tech is now impacting society at scale.”

Amid a year of product mistakes, Google launched Imagen 2, which turned user prompts into artificial intelligence-generated images. Immediately after it was introduced, the product came under scrutiny for historical inaccuracies discovered by users. The company pulled the feature for months before relaunching it, and Pichai told employees the company had “offended our users and shown bias.”

Google also faced problems with its AI summaries product AI Overview atop Google’s traditional search results, where users were also quick to find problems upon that launch.

Pichai has been among tech CEOs getting closer to Trump, who has previously alleged that Google intentionally buried search results of him. Those allegations are unproven. 

Google donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, becoming one of several tech companies working to curry favor with the new administration. Pichai had a prominent standing position on stage alongside other tech CEOs at Trump’s inauguration Monday.