Tiktoks Future Hinges On Last-Minute Court Intervention Or Trumps Favor

Tiktoks Future Hinges On Last-Minute Court Intervention Or Trumps Favor

The clock ticks down to January 19th, when the US government’s ban on TikTok is set to take effect, with ByteDance’s Chinese parent company banking on a last-minute rescue by the Supreme Court or President-elect Donald Trump. However, with obvious names that could buy TikTok – Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle – sitting on the sidelines, the pressure is mounting.

Frank McCourt, a real estate billionaire and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, has emerged as a potential savior for TikTok. He has been vocal about his desire to buy the app, with a reported $20 billion behind him, and a plan dubbed Project Liberty that has garnered interest from ByteDance’s biggest American investors. However, it remains to be seen whether his bid will be enough to save TikTok from the chopping block.

Tech giants Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook have received letters from Congress, warning them that they will be held liable for continuing to host TikTok in their app stores after January 19th. The stakes are high, with Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella expressing concerns about power requirements for its data centers, which could impact the company’s GPU usage.

This has led to speculation about Nvidia’s stock price and highlights ongoing tension between compute required for AI models and what companies feel comfortable spending. Nadella’s comments also underscore the challenges faced by companies like Meta, which has made key hires, including Rohan Anl, a DeepMind distinguished engineer and head of Gemini pretraining.

Zheng Gao, Tesla’s former head of hardware design for Autopilot, has joined Zoox as director of hardware engineering. Meanwhile, The Verge remains your go-to source for the latest news and analysis on the tech world. To stay up-to-date, subscribe to our newsletter for unlimited access to our stories and an improved ad experience on the web. Responding with a tip or feedback can be done securely via Signal.

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