General Atlantic CEO and ByteDance board member Bill Ford said Wednesday that he believes TikTok will soon reach a deal to remain in the U.S.
“It’s in everybody’s interest,” Ford said at an Axios event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“We’ll get on with it, as soon as maybe the end of the week in terms of negotiating what might work … The Chinese government, the U.S. government and the company and the board all have to be involved in this conversation,” he added.
Ford, who is one of five members on the board of TikTok’s parent company, also noted there could be solutions “short of divestiture.”
A law banning the app in the U.S. went into effect Sunday, after ByteDance failed to divest from TikTok. However, the Biden administration declined to enforce the law in its final days, and President Trump signed an executive order Monday barring enforcement for another 75 days as he seeks to strike a deal.
Trump has appeared confident in recent days about the prospects of a deal. He has repeatedly proposed a joint venture in which the U.S. takes 50 percent ownership of the app, although questions remain about whether this would suffice for a “qualified” divestiture under the law.
As a deal appears increasingly likely, new bidders have joined the fray. A group of investors led by Jesse Tinsley, founder and CEO of employer.com, and joined by Jimmy Donaldson, the popular YouTuber better known as MrBeast, announced an offer to buy TikTok on Sunday.
The new dealmaking efforts mark a sharp departure from the status quo under the Biden administration, which Ford argued Wednesday wasn’t “engaging with us on a real dialogue.”
China, which once said it would “firmly oppose” any forced sale of TikTok, has also signaled greater openness to a deal in recent days. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Monday that companies can independently make decisions when it comes to “the operation and acquisition of business.”
