ByteDance

The Beijing-based company is looking to spend several billion dollars and add hundreds of jobs over the next three years here.

ByteDance probably needs beyond the US executive order ban on Sept. 20 to nail down an agreement with either party.

“We’ll either close up TikTok in this country for security reasons, or it will be sold,” Trump told reporters Thursday.

ByteDance Ltd. will dole out the bonus this month to reward employees at a time of unprecedented economic and social upheaval, the company said in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News.

AI interface technologies such as speech and text recognition, and those that analyze data to make personalized content recommendations, were added to a revised list of export-control products published on the Ministry of Commerce’s website late Friday.

Less than two days after Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. submitted rival bids to China’s ByteDance Ltd. to acquire TikTok’s US business, a dark-horse possible third bidder emerged as the two software makers waited for a response to their offers.

An internal ByteDance 2019 presentation reviewed by Reuters showed that last year TikTok had 43.5 million monthly active users in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia, with the majority female, the biggest online consumers in the region.

TikTok is very addictive — particularly for teens — but whether Microsoft or any other buyer can build on that remains to be seen.

With the US election less than 90 days away, Trump is making his challenge of China a central theme of his campaign, where he trails Democrat Joe Biden in the polls.

The Trump administration’s move to ban US residents from doing business with Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat app has erased US$34.6 billion ($47.3 billion) from the Internet giant’s market value.