A 3D-printed miniature model of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and TikTok logo are seen in this illustration taken January 19, 2025.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
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.?
Elon Musk
Trump has already flagged several major investors within his inner circle as acceptable buyers, one of which is Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk.
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.
“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.
Big players, serious money
In addition to Musk and Ellison, experts flagged several other parties likely to be interested in a potential deal for TikTok, adding that the barriers to entry were high.
Given the financial stakes of a TikTok deal, it’s unlikely that some rogue investor is going to swoop in and buy the platform on the cheap, Paul Triolo of Albright Stone Group told CNBC.
“While an up-to-date valuation on TikTok is difficult to come up with, it is likely to the order of $40-80 billion, meaning whoever decides to jump in has to be ready with some serious money,” he said.
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.
MrBeast
The fervor surrounding a purchase of TikTok U.S. has also seen some unconventional players enter the fray.
Social media superstar MrBeast — real name Jimmy Donaldson — who has more than 100 million TikTok followers has posted several videos in which he indicated serious interest in buying the platform, claiming he has had talks with billionaires.
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.”
‘The People’s Bid for TikTok’
Led by Project Liberty Founder Frank McCourt and involving Canadian businessman and TV personality Kevin O’Leary, “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” has made a $20 billion cash offer to buy TikTok.
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.
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
Oracle’s Federal Electronic Health Record experienced a nation-wide outage on Tuesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed to CNBC.
The agency said “all users” of the company’s Federal EHR, including the VA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were impacted. Six VA medical centers, 26 community clinics, and remote VA sites experienced disruptions, the agency said.
“Affected VA medical facilities followed standard contingency procedures during the outage to ensure continuity of care for Veterans,” a VA spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.
An electronic health record, or an EHR, is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that’s updated by doctors and nurses. It’s crucial software within the U.S. health-care system, and outages can cause serious disruptions to patient care.
Oracle is one of the largest EHR vendors thanks to it’s $28 billion acquisition of the medical records giant Cerner in 2022.
The company’s Federal EHR initially started experiencing issues at around 8:37 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, the VA said. Users reported that the software froze and they were unable to access applications. Access was restored and cleared by 2:05 p.m. Eastern that day after Oracle restarted the system.
Oracle is carrying out an investigation to determine what caused the outage, the VA said. Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The outage marks Oracle’s latest stumble in a thorny, years-long EHR rollout with the VA, which has been marred by patient safety concerns. The agency launched a strategic review of Cerner in 2021, before Oracle’s acquisition, and it temporarily paused deployment of the software in 2023.
Four VA facilities in Michigan are slated to deploy Oracle’s Federal EHR in 2026.
In October, Oracle unveiled a brand-new EHR equipped with fresh cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities. The early adopter program for the software begins this year, though it’s not clear if the VA has plans to utilize it.
Oracle is slated to report third-quarter fiscal 2025 earnings on Monday.
Broadcom reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday that topped analysts’ expectations, and the chipmaker offered strong guidance for the current quarter. The stock jumped 16% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did versus LSEG consensus estimates:
Earnings per share: $1.60 adjusted vs. $1.49 expected
Revenue: $14.92 billion vs. $14.61 billion expected
Broadcom said it expects about $14.9 billion in second-quarter revenue, higher than the $14.76 billion forecast by Wall Street analysts. Revenue in the last quarter rose 25% from $11.96 billion a year earlier.
The company said net income increased to $5.5 billion, or $1.14 per share, from $1.33 billion, or 28 cents per share, in the same period last year.
Broadcom’s artificial intelligence business is at the center of the company’s recent boom, which saw its stock price more than double last year. The company is one of the primary data center infrastructure vendors for AI, working both on Google’s custom AI chips as well as providing essential components for networking thousands of other chips together to develop advanced AI software.
Prior to the after-hours pop, the stock was down about 23% so far in 2025, as investors rotate out of risk partly due to concern about President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Broadcom said it recorded $4.1 billion in AI revenue during the first quarter, which is 77% higher on a year-over-year basis. Those sales are reported as part of Broadcom’s semiconductor solutions business, which grew 11% on an annual basis to $8.21 billion during the quarter.
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said in a statement that the company expects “continued strength in AI semiconductor revenue,” reaching a projected $4.4 billion in the second quarter.
In December, Broadcom said it was developing custom AI chips with three large cloud customers. Tan said on Thursday that in addition to those customers, it had “deeply engaged” with two other hyperscalers, and are working with four other potential customers to develop their own custom AI chips.
Tan said that Broadcom closely chooses partners for developing custom AI chips who can deploy the resulting product in large quantities. “To put it bluntly, we don’t do it for startups,” Tan said.
The other major part of Broadcom’s revenue comes from its infrastructure software division, which includes software from the company’s acquisition of VMware in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023. Broadcom said it saw $6.7 billion in software sales during the quarter, a 47% increase on an annual basis.
Antonio Neri, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, speaks during an interview with CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, October 20, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Hewlett Packard Enterprise shares slid 19% in extended trading on Thursday as the data center equipment maker issued quarterly and full-year guidance that came in below consensus.
Here’s how the company did in the fiscal first quarter in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: 49 cents adjusted vs. 49 cents expected
Revenue: $7.85 billion vs. $7.82 billion expected
HPE’s revenue rose 16% year over year in the quarter ending on Jan. 31, according to a statement. The company was left with profit of $598 million, or 44 cents per share, up from $387 million, or 29 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier. The adjusted earnings per share excludes stock-based compensation.
“We could have executed better,” CEO Antonio Neri said on a conference call with analysts. The company had higher than normal inventory for artificial intelligence servers because of a shift to next-generation Blackwell graphics processing units from Nvidia.
The backlog for AI systems rose 29% quarter over quarter to $3.1 billion. Total server revenue totaled $4.29 billion.
HPE dealt with extensive discounting in the market while selling traditional servers during the quarter, finance chief Marie Myers said. As the quarter progressed, HPE moved to limit travel and discretionary spending, she said.
“We expect pricing adjustments may negatively impact top-line growth in the near term,” Myers said.
The company said it would implement a cost-cutting program involving layoffs over the next 18 months that will lead to $350 million in gross savings by the 2027 fiscal year. Around 2,500 employees will be affected, a spokesperson said, representing about 5% of the workforce when also factoring in expected attrition. At the end of October, HPE employed 61,000 people, according to its most recent annual report.
In January, the U.S. Justice Department filed in a federal district court to stop HPE from acquiring Juniper Networks. HPE announced the proposed $14 billion deal in January 2024. The court expects a trial to begin in July, according to the statement. The deal should close by October 2025, HPE said. In December, the company had said the transaction would be done in early 2025.
HPE called for 28 cents to 34 cents in adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal second quarter, with revenue coming in between $7.2 billion and $7.6 billion. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had looked for 50 cents per share on $7.93 billion in revenue.
For the 2025 fiscal year, HPE sees $1.70 to $1.90 in adjusted earnings per share. Analysts polled by LSEG had predicted $2.13 per share.
HPE expects to update its prices to reflect higher expenses from U.S. tariffs, Neri said, adding that he has not perceived any business deterioration from President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
As of Thursday’s close, HPE shares were up about 2% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index was down 2%.