Walmart teams up with Microsoft to buy TikTok

Walmart lauded TikTok’s integration of ecommerce and advertising capabilities in other markets and said that a three-way partnership could bring that to the US. The deal would help Walmart reach customers across virtual and physical sales channels as well as grow its online marketplace and advertising business.

“We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of US TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of US government regulators,” Walmart said in a statement.

Zhang Yiming, ByteDance’s founder and CEO, said in a separate letter that the company was “moving quickly to find resolutions to the issues that we face globally, particularly in the U.S. and India.”

The move comes shortly after TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer left the company just three months after he took on the role.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning US transactions with TikTok. He later issued a separate order giving ByteDance 90 days to divest TikTok’s US operations and data.