Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in March 2024, which required ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American owner or face a ban on operations in the U.S. The bill was passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by former President Joe Biden in April 2024, but ByteDance immediately challenged the legality of the ban . The app was previously banned on federal government devices due to security concerns, and on official devices in numerous states. Trump, who tried to ban the app by executive order during his first term in office, seemingly changed his mind about TikTok after his 2024 presidential campaign embraced it in an attempt to court young voters. The ban was upheld by the Supreme Court in January, but the Trump administration has since issued executive orders delaying enforcing the law three times since the decision, most recently on June 17.

It’s unclear how much ByteDance would sell TikTok for. Valuations for the wildly popular app, which draws 170 million users in the U.S., according to the company, range from $30 billion to over $300 billion. Rumored potential buyers have included major tech companies like Microsoft and Oracle, as well as billionaires like former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary during his first term in office, also floated the idea of purchasing the app with a group of billionaire investors when the ban was first passed.

This is a developing story and will be updated.