• A string of US executives has left TikTok in the past year.
• The departures are creating a management vacuum that Chinese leaders are filling, insiders told BI.
• TikTok is under political pressure to separate its US business from its China-based owner ByteDance.

The Trump administration is racing to curb TikTok's ties to China. But inside the company, a string of recent US executive departures and team restructurings has given Chinese leaders a greater grip on its American business, company insiders told Business Insider.

This month, US-based sales and marketing exec Blake Chandlee, who served as the face of TikTok at key industry events like Cannes and Advertising Week, stepped down. Will Liu, known as Liu Xiaobing in China, is taking over management of his global business solutions team. Liu, a Singapore-based staffer who reports to ByteDance China chairman Zhang Lidong, works on monetization products for the company's Chinese apps and TikTok.

The sales team shakeup is one example of a broader shift in power across several company departments.

TikTok made a big push to hire top talent in the US as it looked to launch new businesses like e-commerce in the country. But over the past year, at least seven key US-based executives, including Chandlee, have left their roles across various business lines. Some have been replaced by Chinese leaders. There's a sense among some of TikTok's roughly 7,000 US staffers that ByteDance executives who are either based in China or have come to the US from China are tightening control. Business Insider spoke to nine current and seven former staffers who have worked at the company in the past year.

"They have been consolidating under Chinese leadership," a TikTok employee who works on its e-commerce business told BI. "Before we had a senior manager in the US, and now the person is outside the US."

TikTok and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment from BI.

The leadership balance may change again if TikTok finds a new owner outside ByteDance, as required by a divestment law. The Trump administration is working on a potential deal, and the president wrote on Friday that he was giving the company another 75 days to find a solution. Some employees are eager for a switch that would put new US executives in charge.

"I really hope this happens," a staffer who works in operations said of a prospective sale. "I hope it can be new leadership if they can really get bought by Oracle or someone else."

A slow drip of exits

While staff at TikTok's parent company ByteDance have had the final say over its product for years, and US leaders like North America global business solutions head Khartoon Weiss remain, the 16 insiders felt that the recent departures of other top US managers expanded control of Chinese leaders.

TikTok's e-commerce team, which runs its Shop product under the leadership of China-based ByteDance executive Bob Kang, has lost several US leaders over the last year and a half, according to nine of the insiders.

Since late 2023, US executives that have exited include Sandie Hawkins, TikTok's former GM of US e-commerce; Marni Levine, one of Hawkins' two replacements, who oversaw TikTok Shop's US operations; and Mary Hubbard, the company's former head of governance and experience in the Americas for Shop.

Executives with experience working on TikTok's Chinese sister app are filling the void, including Mu Qing, a former Douyin e-commerce VP; Sheng Zhou, the company's SVP of global e-commerce; and product VP Xu Luran.

TikTok recruited heavily from Amazon and other big e-commerce players when it began testing Shop in the US a couple of years ago, bringing local knowledge into the business, insiders said. But in the past year, as US executives have left, leadership has shifted from building a localized shopping product to instead trying to imitate Douyin, a staffer who works on TikTok Shop told BI.

Chinese leadership is also cracking down on its US team this year after they felt the country underperformed in 2024, as BI previously reported.

Other US teams within TikTok have similarly seen American leaders swapped out for ByteDance staffers from China.

There have been examples of these power shifts as early as 2022. Vanessa Campos, a former TikTok recruiter focused on early career hires who left the company this year, wrote in an April blog post that her US manager was replaced by a global leader from China in late 2022 who began "tightening their grip on hiring priorities." Chinese leadership led the early careers team from that point forward, Campos told BI.

Rebecca Sawyer, TikTok's US advertising lead for small and midsize businesses, was replaced by ByteDance executive Qing Lan in late 2023. Qing previously worked on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin.

The e-commerce staffer said Chinese leadership's control of the business "hyper-accelerated" in the second half of 2024.

Globally, at least eight executives have left TikTok in 2025, The Information earlier reported, citing departures like the music exec Ole Obermann and North America ads leader Sameer Singh.

As more Chinese managers take charge, US staffers feel left out of the loop

ByteDance is still very much a Chinese tech company at its core. Decisions about its global products are often made in China, where it has offices in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou. US TikTok employees previously told BI that they refer to its Beijing office as "HQ."

As it's expanded into other parts of the world, ByteDance has brought hundreds of employees over from China into its new offices via H-1B or L-1 visas, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services records and another company employee with knowledge of its visa strategy.

About 670 of the roughly 1,100 approved US H-1B visa hires for TikTok and ByteDance workers were from China during fiscal year 2023, the most recent period BI was able to obtain data via a Freedom of Information Act request. In fiscal year 2022, the company received 445 H-1B approvals for Chinese nationals, per USCIS data shared with US Sen. Tom Cotton.

"A lot of leaders are Chinese nationals from mainland China," the employee with knowledge of its visa strategy said.

But the company also grew TikTok globally by leaning into the expertise of local hires. Business lines like recruiting, the creator outreach team, and its sales staff that interface with US marketers have generally operated with less oversight from China, four of the current and former staffers said. Staff members in some of those divisions have not had to take late calls with Chinese colleagues to accommodate time zone differences, for example. That independence from China has drifted away in the past year, the insiders told BI.

In 2024, TikTok's US creator team was asked to align its goals with a product team mostly based in China, a former staffer who worked on the creator team told BI.

"While we weren't actually reporting into them, it was almost like a dotted line," the ex-employee said. "If they said jump, the creator team had to jump."

US employees reporting to managers based in China told BI they sometimes feel excluded from the team, either because they don't speak or read Mandarin Chinese or because they work in a different time zone and are unable to join certain calls.

A trust and safety team member who does not speak Mandarin said it was challenging to try to work with Chinese colleagues who, they felt, often made little effort to accommodate their US teammates.

The staffer said they'd been provided with some internal documents translated from Mandarin that have been hard to follow.

"I'm always two days behind," they said.

Another staffer on the engineering team estimated their China-based manager had directly spoken to them for less than 30 minutes over the last six months.

The employee said it was challenging to work with translated documents and group chats in the company's internal messaging platform Lark that were originally written in Mandarin.

"The meetings conducted are in Chinese as well, so a lot of my American colleagues can't understand the context," this person said.

A former product staffer said they felt like it was harder to get their ideas heard after switching from a US-based manager to one based in China.

"I felt like they didn't really listen to the US opinion," the former employee said of their new manager. "They would say things like 'Just follow what the Chinese product manager said.'"

A TikTok sale in the US could shake up the company — if it actually shifts who is in charge

The power structure for TikTok's US business may shift in the coming weeks if new owners take over operations.

The company could reach a deal to sell TikTok's US assets in order to comply with the law requiring ByteDance to divest from its US app.

ByteDance said it's talking to the US government about a potential solution, but key matters need to be resolved, and an agreement would be subject to approval under Chinese law.

As staffers await a political resolution, morale at the company is low among some who are experiencing burnout and dealing with the aftermath of a recent review cycle that led to performance-improvement plans and staff exits, company insiders previously told BI.

"We essentially haven't had a voice for a very long time," the second e-commerce worker said. "They say they want you to be candid and clear, but really they want you to fall in line and follow the Chinese and rebuild Douyin."

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• AppLovin confirmed a preliminary bid in an SEC filing to buy TikTok's business outside China.
• China's ByteDance faces a Saturday deadline to divest TikTok's US operations.
• AppLovin joins a long list of suitors who have put in last-minute bids.

Adtech company AppLovin has submitted a last-minute bid to acquire TikTok's operations outside China, joining a crowded list of suitors a day before a US TikTok ban is set to take effect.

AppLovin confirmed it submitted a preliminary "indication of interest" to President Donald Trump in a Thursday SEC filing.

The company, which helps developers market and advertise their apps, said in the filing that "there can be no assurance" that a transaction involving TikTok would proceed.

It's unclear exactly how AppLovin would finance or structure a deal, given TikTok's vast scale. TikTok's US operations are estimated to have a sale value of $40 billion to $50 billion.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has previously suggested TikTok's global valuation could exceed $100 billion, potentially reaching $200 billion if its algorithm is included in the calculation. AppLovin has a market capitalization of just over $89 billion.

The bid places AppLovin among a growing list of late-stage suitors vying for TikTok as US lawmakers push for the app's separation from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

This week, Amazon put in a last-minute bid to buy TikTok, The New York Times reported. And on Wednesday, Reuters reported that a consortium led by OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely had submitted an intent to bid on TikTok.

They add to a flurry of other names that have been linked to buying TikTok.

Oracle has emerged as a leading contender, according to multiple reports, with a deal reportedly involving oversight of TikTok's US user data.

The YouTuber MrBeast said in January that he was part of a group making an all-cash offer for TikTok's US operations.

Other parties linked to a TikTok deal include Microsoft, Walmart, video-sharing platform Rumble, and AI startup Perplexity.

TikTok's future in the US has been uncertain since April 2024, when Congress mandated ByteDance divest TikTok's US business or face a nationwide ban. After taking office in January, Trump extended that deadline by 75 days.

The White House has been directly involved in deal talks as national security concerns remain central to negotiations.

On Wednesday, Trump introduced an effective 54% tariff rate on Chinese imports. The president told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday it gives the US "great power" to negotiate and a potential bargaining chip in a TikTok deal. On Friday, China announced a 34% tariff on all products imported from the US.

• TikTok is looking at a possible ban in the US. Again.
• But remember what happened the last time: Donald Trump simply ignored a law that said the app would be banned if it didn't have US owners.
• Sometimes, history really does repeat.

TikTok could be banned in the US in the next few days. Or it could stay.

Perhaps it will have new owners. Maybe it won't.

Yes, you've heard all of this before: In January, the enormously popular video app was slated to go dark in the US — and in fact, did go offline for a few hours — because of a law forcing the Chinese-owned company to shut down or find new owners for its US operations.

Then Donald Trump signed an executive order pushing back the date of the ban until April 5 — that's Saturday. So here we are.

In the newest version of the story, the most likely outcome is a deal where a coalition of US investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Blackstone, and Silver Lake, buys a 50% stake in TikTok's US operations; in that proposal, some of the existing investors in ByteDance, TikTok's current owner, keep a stake as well. We've also heard about a flurry of last-minute bids from Amazon and other players. Vice President JD Vance says there will be some kind of deal announced before the deadline.

A TikTok sale needs one big sign-off

The problem with any of these would-be solutions: It's entirely unclear whether ByteDance would agree to divest its US operations, and/or whether the Chinese government would allow it. Without those sign-offs, it doesn't matter what kind of deal structure Trump and US investors would like.

Trump has previously said he might convince Chinese officials to OK a deal by reducing tariffs on China. But as of Thursday, we have no idea if those negotiations are happening; Dan Primack, the well-sourced Axios finance reporter, says his sources say "they've still not heard of direct discussions between the US and Chinese governments on a particular proposal." I've asked TikTok and the White House for comment.

So it's entirely possible that on Saturday, there still won't be an actual deal — as opposed to a proposal — in place to transfer majority ownership of TikTok's US operations to non-Chinese owners, which was the thrust of the law passed by Congress, signed by Joe Biden, and upheld by the Supreme Court.

And If that's the case, what happens on Saturday?

My hunch: Nothing.

Or, to be more specific: Trump announces that the proposal he's announced is a deal, regardless of the facts. And TikTok keeps operating as normal, and the can keeps getting kicked down the road.

After all, we've already seen Trump ignore a TikTok deadline in the past.

In January, even before he was president, Trump was telling various technology companies to ignore the TikTok law that went into effect on January 19. And his executive order specifically instructs the US attorney general not to enforce the law "even after the expiration" of the 75-day extension Trump granted himself.

And just to keep repeating this: While the existing TikTok law does allow the president to grant a one-time, 90-day extension before TikTok is banned, that's only supposed to happen if there is an actual plan to divest, and there is "evidence of significant progress" toward making that happen, and there are "relevant binding agreements" in place.

But obviously none of that was happening on January 20, when Trump signed his executive order pushing the ban back. And it doesn't seem to be happening yet this time around.

We're in Trump's world now

In a normal, pre-Trump world, you'd expect someone — perhaps a TikTok rival like Meta, perhaps a member of Congress who signed the TikTok sell-or-ban bill last year — to raise serious objections to the fact that the Trump administration appears to be ignoring a law. Perhaps someone might have even challenged the White House in court.

But in the world we live in today, it looks like TikTok will be in the US for some time to come. No matter who owns it.

• Zhang Yiming has built a $57.5 billion fortune since cofounding ByteDance, the Chinese tech giant behind TikTok.
• Zhang is highly private and little is publicly known about his personal life.
• He recently became the richest person in China. Here's a look at his career and life.

The widespread popularity of TikTok has created not only a new generation of social media stars — it's also helped mint China's wealthiest person.

Zhang Yiming, the 41-year-old software engineer who founded the app's parent company, ByteDance, now has a net worth of $57.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

This makes Zhang the richest person in China, edging ahead of Pony Ma, the founder and CEO of Tencent. Ma has a net worth of $56.5 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Zhang is a highly private person and little is publicly known about his personal life.

After running ByteDance for nearly a decade, Zhang stepped down as CEO in 2021, reportedly telling employees that he's "not very social, preferring solitary activities like being online, reading, listening to music, and contemplating what may be possible."

"The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager," Zhang said at the time, according to Reuters, saying he would be a better help to the company in a role that didn't involve managing people directly.

Here's what we know about his career rise and life:

Zhang was born in 1983 in China's Fujian province.

Zhang's parents worked as civil servants, according to Bloomberg.

His name is based on a Chinese proverb about "surprising everyone with a first attempt," the South China Morning Post reported.

He married his college sweetheart.

Zhang graduated from Nankai University in 2005, where he started off studying microelectronics before switching his major to software engineering, according to the South China Morning Post.

Zhang's first job out of college was at a digital travel booking startup called Kuxun.

Zhang said he was an engineer at first but came to be in charge of 40 to 50 people by his second year at the company, according to SCMP. He credits that job with teaching him sales skills that he later used to grow ByteDance, including learning "what sales are good sales."

Zhang learned the value of pursuing excellence while still in his first job at Kuxun, he told ByteDance employees, according to the report.

"At that time, I was responsible for the technology, but when the product had problems, and I would actively participate in the discussion of [the] product plan," Zhang said, according to the newspaper. "A lot of people say this is not what I should be doing. But I want to say: your sense of responsibility and your desire to do things well, will drive you to do more things and to gain experience."

Zhang also worked at Microsoft before founding ByteDance, the South China Morning Post reported.

Zhang founded TikTok's parent company in 2012.

The company owns several social networking apps that operate within China. It released a WeChat rival called FlipChat, and a video-messaging app called Duoshan in 2019.

Zhang and ByteDance's first product was a news aggregator app called Toutiao.

Zhang wanted to create a news platform whose results were powered by artificial intelligence, separate from China's search engine Baidu.

"We push information, not by queries, by news recommendations," Zhang told Bloomberg in 2017.

Despite its focus on news, Zhang told Bloomberg's Lulu Yilun Chen and Mark Bergen in 2017 that ByteDance does not have any journalists on its staff like many other social networks.

"The most important thing is that we are not a news business," Zhang told Bloomberg. "We are more like a search business or a social media platform. We are doing very innovative work. We are not a copycat of a U.S. company, both in product and technology."

Zhang launched ByteDance's most successful app — TikTok — under the name Douyin in September 2016.

TikTok is one of the most popular social networks among American teens and has more than 170 million US users as of September 2024, the company says.

Zhang was known for making his own TikToks — and requiring his senior employees to do so as well.

"For a very long time, I was merely watching TikTok videos without making any of them myself, because it's a product mainly for young people," Zhang said, according to the South China Morning Post. "But later on we made it compulsory for all management team members to make their own TikTok videos, and they must win a certain number of 'likes'. Otherwise, they have to do push-ups. It was a big step for me."

Zhang's leadership style is "soft-spoken yet charismatic, logical yet passionate, young yet wise," according to Time Magazine's Kai-Fu Lee.

Zhang stepped down as ByteDance's CEO in 2021.

Zhang stepped down as CEO in 2021, saying that he "lack[s] some of the skills that make an ideal manager" and would be a greater asset to the company in a non-management role.

Zhang wants the app to continue to grow abroad, saying that he hopes his ByteDance will be "as borderless as Google," according to the South China Morning Post.

"We must work harder, we must also be more perfectionist," Zhang said, according to SCMP. "Just like there was an international division of labor in the industrial age, in today's information age there's also an international division of labor. Chinese entrepreneurs must also improve their own capabilities as they go global," he said.

However, TikTok's ownership by a Chinese parent company and its growing influence in the US has raised concerns among US regulators.

In April, the Senate passed a divest-or-ban law on TikTok, requiring the company to stop operations in the US on January 19 if it did not divest from ByteDance.

However, the ban on TikTok was paused for 75 days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 20. TikTok has until April 5 to find a new owner in the US.

Several big-name buyers like Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, and "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary have expressed interest in acquiring TikTok.

Zhang has become a billionaire owing to the success of TikTok and ByteDance more broadly.

Forbes first declared Zhang a billionaire in March 2018, estimating that Zhang was worth $4 billion.

On the annual Hurun China Rich List for 2024, he was listed as the country's richest person, with an estimated net worth of $49.3 billion.

In March, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index recognized Zhang as China's richest person, with a net worth of $57.5 billion.

• Blake Chandlee, a TikTok advertising leader, is stepping down next month, per a company memo.
• Chandlee is being replaced by a product executive, Will Liu, as part of a company reorganization.
• Chandlee said he expects to stay with the company in an advisory role.

Blake Chandlee, a top advertising executive at TikTok, is stepping down from his leadership role at the company next month, according to a memo sent to staffers on Monday.

Chandlee's departure is part of an internal reorganization that will merge TikTok's ads and marketing organization, called the global business solutions team, with its global monetization product technology team.

Will Liu, who currently oversees that monetization product team, will lead the combined group. Chandlee will remain affiliated with the company in an advisory role, he wrote in the memo.

Chandlee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Khartoon Weiss, meanwhile, will oversee the global business solutions team in North America, in addition to leading its global agency and accounts team, a company spokesperson told Business Insider.

Chandlee's departure comes at a tenuous moment for TikTok. The company is currently reckoning with a divest-or-ban law that requires its owner, ByteDance, to separate itself from its US app. The app is operating in the US based on an executive order that gave TikTok until April 5 to sort out a political resolution with the Trump administration.

The move follows other recent departures from executives, including Ole Obermann, the company's global head of music business development.

Read Chandlee's full memo below:

Hey all,

As Shou has just shared, as we strive towards 2025 goals and beyond, we have had many discussions about the future of the business and how to continue transforming our model. Notably, how we continue to move faster together in continued development of automated capabilities and deep integration into planning systems, TikTok Shop, and measurement & ecosystem partners.

As our offerings become more technical and our client product solutions become more sophisticated to provide even more value, it is important that Global Business Solutions (GBS) and Global Monetization Product Technology (GMPT) operate increasingly hand-in-hand. To enable this, I have decided it's best to streamline under one department lead and will be scaling back my day-to-day role to an advisory one. Leaders of both organizations will report directly to Will Liu, effective April 1. I want to take this opportunity to share my perspective with you on why I believe it is the right decision moving forward.

Reflecting on the last six years, we have built something that has never been built before. In 2019, I joined a start-up whose user base was growing fast based on a simple concept of short form video combined with music, creating a unique entertainment experience. A small group of us, split between shared working spaces in NY, London, and LA were tasked with figuring out how to engage with this audience and introducing ads into the mix to create the first ads business on TikTok. We didn't have a name, but came up with Global Business Solutions as it sounded impressive, and thus formed GBS.

That humble beginning has turned into the fastest growing ads business in the world (outside of Douyin), achieving our current revenue levels two years ahead of Meta and four years ahead of Google. And we are not done yet, as we ambitiously target 50% growth again in 2025. To be clear, this has not been a linear process. We have encountered a ban in India, a global pandemic where we all worked from home for two years, geo-political headwinds, wars in Ukraine and Middle East, increased regulatory oversight, and more. All that said, the things we have always focused on are our clients and how we can best deliver business outcomes for them based on the tools and products we had at each point in the journey. Remember, as we were building GBS, the product and engineering teams were rapidly building capabilities for our clients to identify, reach, engage, and measure our global audiences. This focus on building relevant and impactful solutions for clients has fueled our teams around the world, large and small. Along with the trust each of YOU have built with your clients, agencies, and partners, this combo has been the foundation of this growth and will continue to be.

Will and I were spending a lot of time thinking how we can communicate better, deliver client feedback faster, launch products more smoothly, be more transparent and accountable, and ultimately learn and iterate to get to market faster. What became more obvious was that our structure was slowing us down. I have always encouraged our teams to think differently, be transformative, and not let the past limit the future. By aligning the GBS org directly with the product org, we can truly move as one team. Will is an exceptional product and eng leader who has built strong teams and products globally. He is respected by the sales leaders and has a true focus on delivering best in class solutions for our clients. This change is an example of Will and I eating our own dogfood. We are being disruptive to allow for the success of the business. To be clear, this is not a traditional way of thinking about an organization and may feel uncomfortable for some. It was not an easy decision for me especially, but it is the right one at the right time. If executed correctly, the business, and therefore clients, will benefit. For all of us, this will come down to trusting and believing in this decision, then committing to execution. It's that simple.

As for me, I've always wanted to lead with honesty and openness and want you to know that I am very comfortable with this. I am proud of what we have built and grateful to have been a part of this amazing story that will continue through you! I have said this before, I love to build and for this last chapter, I have been able to build a part of history. I am so lucky for the opportunity given to me by Lidong almost six years ago to the day. He trusted me and I have learned a lot from him and Shou over the years on how to push myself out of my comfort zone and to continue to push my boundaries. I won't be going anywhere soon, you will see me around and over time, that too shall fade but I will leave you with this.

You are building history. Books will be written about this company, stories of how clients are better for our efforts and creators and SMBs alike have had their lives changed. Remember, there is only one TikTok, enjoy the ride. Thank you for trusting me to lead this team, I am eternally grateful and humbled.

Blake

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• ByteDance uses eight category ratings to evaluate TikTok employees in performance reviews.
• If an employee receives a low rating, they can be put on a performance improvement plan.
• The company last year told managers it wanted to dole out more low scores in reviews.

It's performance review season at TikTok, and some staffers are getting hit with PIP-or-severance offers.

Business Insider viewed a rubric for how the company scores employees in reviews, which happen twice a year. Scroll to see the criteria.

The company grades employees using eight category ratings, ranging from "outstanding" to "failed." Four current and recent former TikTok employees in the Asia and US offices verified the scoring structure, though one US staffer said the wording, such as adjectives or word order, varied slightly from a different format they'd seen around the ratings. The meaning was the same, they said.

The rubric measures employees on three main criteria: Output, Leadership Principles, and ByteStyles — a set of workplace values it uses to define company culture. Those cultural principles include being candid and clear, courageous, and treating every day like it's "day 1."

Below is a rating scale available to employees in Asia at TikTok and ByteDance. The global employees BI spoke with said these ratings are combined into an overall performance score for each staffer. The staffers asked to remain anonymous to protect their jobs and career prospects; their identities are known to BI.

TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.

For ByteStyle and leadership principles, employees are only scored between "I" for "improvement needed" and "E" for "exceed expectations."

How low scores impact employees

Performance reviews have been a stress point at the company, particularly after managers were told last year to give out more low reviews to better differentiate performance. A score of "M-" for "meet expectations," or "I", which is defined as "improvement needed," may lead to a performance-improvement plan or a severance offer. PIPs are common in the corporate world. Companies may offer them as a path to recover from a bad review, though many people say it's hard to survive them.

Four current TikTok staffers told BI that they felt that PIPs were essentially impossible to accomplish at the company.

"I have never met somebody who's passed a PIP," one of the staffers said.

One former staffer said the rating scale can be misleading. For example, an M-, which is listed in the rubric as "meet expectations," is internally considered a poor grade.

Current and former TikTok employees previously told BI that the pressure to meet performance goals has increased in the US in the past year, amid reorgs and other changes at the company. Several of those staff said their goals had shifted, making it difficult to meet expectations. The combination of internal pressure along with outside political threats due to a divest-or-ban law have contributed to burnout and mental health leave requests among some staff, BI earlier reported.

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• Most of the world's biggest billionaires have suffered wealth declines this year as stocks have fallen.
• Susquehanna's Jeff Yass bucks the trend with an unmatched $17.2 billion rise due to ByteDance's valuation.
• The poker fan who backed Trump's campaign is now the richest man in finance after Warren Buffett.

Many of the world's wealthiest people have taken heavy blows to their personal fortunes this year as recession fears continue to weigh on stocks. Yet one Wall Street titan has leaped up the rich list, growing his net worth more than anybody else.

Jeff Yass, the cofounder of Susquehanna International Group, has gained an unmatched $17.2 billion in wealth this year as of Wednesday's close, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

In contrast, Elon Musk has had $113 billion wiped off his net worth as Tesla stock has tanked 39% this year. Oracle's Larry Ellison, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Dell Technologies' Michael Dell, Alphabet's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, and Microsoft's Steve Ballmer have each had at least $12 billion of their wealth erased too.

Yass' gain this year has boosted his personal fortune from about $47 billion to $63 billion, ranking him 23rd on the wealth index. He's now the richest man in finance after Warren Buffett, the fourth-biggest gainer with a $13.4 billion rise this year.

The wealth surge for Yass, 66, stems from an early investment in ByteDance. He still owns about 7% of the Chinese social media company behind TikTok. ByteDance intends to repurchase employees' shares at a valuation of about $312 billion, up from $268 billion at the end of 2023, Bloomberg recently reported.

Moreover, ByteDance investors SoftBank, Fidelity, and T. Rowe Price have raised their internal valuation estimates to north of $400 billion. The upshot is Yass' reported stake may have jumped in value by roughly 50% in a little over a year.

Susquehanna is also worth almost $50 billion, and Yass owns upward of 51% of the firm, regulatory filings show. Yass didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Yass is a Republican mega-donor who supported President Donald Trump's campaign. He's benefited from the US leader's decision to extend the deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok and its US operations over national security concerns.

Trump said last year that banning TikTok would make young Americans "go crazy," and he didn't want Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to sweep in and take its place.

Art Dantchik, who cofounded Susquehanna with Yass and is also a ByteDance director, has seen his wealth jump by $6.5 billion to reach almost $17 billion this year, putting him in 122nd place on the rich list.

Yass, 66, is the son of two accountants and graduated as a math major, he says in a video on Susquehanna's YouTube channel. He moved to Las Vegas and spent about 18 months playing poker before becoming an independent options trader. After realizing how lucrative the sector was, he recruited his poker buddies from college to work at his own firm.

Games remain a core part of Susquehanna's culture, according to its website. Employees can take part in board game nights, complete puzzles dotted around the office, and compete in an annual poker tournament. Managers also use strategy games to teach lessons to new employees.

• Tech companies seek to hire thousands of skilled foreign workers through H-1B visas each year.
• President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown is raising questions about the future of such visas.
• See which tech companies file for the most H-1B visas, according to publicly available data.

Tech industry giants are hiring thousands of foreign workers through H-1B visas each year, even as the program faces renewed scrutiny under President Donald Trump's second term and growing skepticism from Silicon Valley leaders who once championed it.

The H-1B program allows US companies to hire up to 85,000 foreign workers with specialized skills annually. Workers are chosen through an annual lottery, which kicked off last week and will run through March 24. While Trump expressed support in December, calling it "a great program" that he has "used many times," key figures in his political base have voiced opposition.

Things escalated late last year when Trump appointed Sriram Krishnan, a first-generation Indian American who immigrated to the US from India in 2007, to serve as a senior White House advisor for AI. The appointment drew backlash from some MAGA supporters, including former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who called the program "a total and complete scam to destroy the American worker."

In late January, Republican Senators John Kennedy and Rick Scott introduced a joint resolution under the Congressional Review Act to reverse a Biden-era rule that extended the automatic renewal period for employment authorization documents from 180 days to 540 days. Kennedy said the extension "hampers the Trump administration's efforts to enforce our immigration laws," signaling there would be additional scrutiny of work permits for foreign nationals.

Even tech leaders have softened their stance. Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen, once unequivocal supporters, have recently acknowledged the need for improvement.

Andreessen said on Lex Fridman's podcast last month that the US has been conducting "a 60-year social engineering experiment to exclude native-born people from the educational slots and jobs that high-skill immigration has been funneling foreigners into."

Musk has called for raising the minimum salary requirements for people on H-1B visas and adding a "yearly cost" to make it more expensive for companies to hire from overseas. "I've been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform," he posted on X.

While the program's future remains uncertain, any significant changes or restrictions to H-1B visas would profoundly impact America's largest technology companies, which have built their workforces around access to global talent.

Business Insider used publicly available data from the Department of Labor and US Citizenship and Immigration Services to analyze which tech companies filed the most H-1B requests during the 2024 government fiscal year. The data comes from applications submitted by businesses seeking to sponsor skilled workers' visas.

Our analysis shows that tech giants collectively file for thousands of these visas annually, using them to fill critical roles that they claim cannot be adequately staffed domestically.

Notably, not every visa filing results in an actual hire, and occasionally multiple filings might be associated with a single position. Companies sometimes submit new applications to accommodate amendments or extend existing visas. Nevertheless, the data available to the public offers a reliable glimpse into the H-1B visa requirements of major corporations.

We have excluded IT consulting firms from this analysis to focus specifically on tech product companies, despite consulting giants like Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services traditionally being among the program's largest users.

The analysis reveals that tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple are among the program's heaviest users, with thousands of filings each.

While most positions are for software engineers and other technical roles, companies also use the program to fill specialized positions in research, product management, and data science. The employee head count for each firm comes from the latest publicly available data such as the company's latest annual report, their corporate website, or according to sources BI spoke with.

The firms listed either did not respond to a request for comment or declined to comment on the record.

Here are the top 40 tech companies sponsoring H-1B visas, ranked by their number of filings:

1. Amazon

Total certified H-1B filings: 14,783 (including 23 for Whole Foods).

Total employees worldwide: 1,556,000 as of the end of 2024.

2. Microsoft

Total certified H-1B filings: 5,695 flings (including 970 from LinkedIn).

Total employees worldwide: 228,000 as of the second quarter of 2024.

3. Alphabet

Total certified H-1B filings: 5,537 (including 115 from Waymo and Verily).

Total employees worldwide: 183,323 as of the end of 2024.

4. Meta

Total certified H-1B filings: 4,844.

Total employees worldwide: 74,067 as of the end of 2024.

5. Apple

Total certified H-1B filings: 3,880.

Total employees worldwide: 164,000 as of the third quarter of 2024.

6. IBM

Total certified H-1B filings: 2,907.

Total employees worldwide: More than 293,400 as of the end of 2024.

7. Intel

Total certified H-1B filings: 2,558.

Total employees worldwide: 108,900 as of the end of 2024.

8. Oracle

Total certified H-1B filings: 2,141.

Total employees worldwide: 159,000 as of the end of May 2024.

9. Tesla

Total certified H-1B filings: 1,677.

Total employees worldwide: 125,665 as of the end of 2024.

10. Bytedance

Total certified H-1B filings: 1,611.

Total employees worldwide: More than 150,000, according to the company's website.

11. Salesforce

Total certified H-1B filings: 1,525 (A Salesforce spokesperson said that the company filed 1,808 H-1B petitions in fiscal year 2024 including new hires, amendments, and extensions).

Total employees worldwide: 76,453 as of the end of January 2025.

12. Nvidia

Total certified H-1B filings: 1,519.

Total employees worldwide: 36,000 as of the end of fiscal year 2025.

13. Cisco

Total certified H-1B filings: 1,330.

Total employees worldwide: 90,400 as of the end of fiscal year 2024.

14. Qualcomm

Total certified H-1B filings: 1,291.

Total employees worldwide: 49,000 employees as of the end of the third quarter of 2024.

15. Adobe

Total certified H-1B filings: 787.

Total employees worldwide: More than 30,708 of as November 2024.

16. Intuit

Total certified H-1B filings: 770.

Total employees worldwide: 18,200 at the end of fiscal year 2024.

17. Uber

Total certified H-1B filings: 703.

Total employees worldwide: 31,100 as of the end of 2024.

18. Paypal

Total certified H-1B filings: 623.

Total employees worldwide: 24,400 as of the end of 2024.

19. eBay

Total certified H-1B filings: 548 (An eBay spokesperson said eBay filed 494 H-1B visas in fiscal year 2024, noting that the publicly available information doesn't disclose the exact number of roles hired for.)

Total employees worldwide: 11,500 as of the end of 2024.

20. Rivian

Total certified H-1B filings: 584.

Total employees worldwide: 14,861 as of the end of 2024.

21. ServiceNow

Total certified H-1B filings: 578.

Total employees worldwide: 26,293 as of the end of 2024.

22. HP

Total certified H-1B filings: 533.

Total employees worldwide: 58,000 as of the end of 2024.

23. Dell

Total certified H-1B filings: 489.

Total employees worldwide: 120,000 as of February 2, 2024.

24. Lucid Motors

Total certified H-1B filings: 488.

Total employees worldwide: 6,800 as of the end of 2024.

25. DoorDash

Total certified H-1B filings: 427.

Total employees worldwide: 23,700 as of the end of 2024.

26. Fiserv

Total certified H-1B filings: 403.

Total employees worldwide: 38,000 as of the end of 2024.

27. Micron Technology

Total certified H-1B filings: 369.

Total employees worldwide: 48,000 as of August 29, 2024.

28. VMWare

Total certified H-1B filings: 359.

Total employees worldwide: 16,000 according to Business Insider's sources.

29. ADP

Total certified H-1B filings: 350.

Total employees worldwide: 64,000 as of June 2024.

30. Workday

Total certified H-1B filings: 347.

Total employees worldwide: 20,400 as of January 31, 2025.

31. Expedia

Total certified H-1B filings: 331.

Total employees worldwide: 16,500 as of the end of 2024.

32. MathWorks

Total certified H-1B filings: 295.

Total employees worldwide: 6,500, according to the corporate website.

33. Snowflake

Total certified H-1B filings: 285.

Total employees worldwide: 7,004 as of January 31, 2024.

34. Databricks

Total certified H-1B filings: 283.

Total employees worldwide: More than 7,000, according to the company's website.

35. Synopsys

Total certified H-1B filings: 267.

Total employees worldwide: 20,000 as of November 2024.

36. Stripe

Total certified H-1B filings: 265.

Total employees worldwide: Approximately 8,200 according to BI's reporting.

37. Snap

Total certified H-1B filings: 258

Total employees worldwide: 4,911 as of December 2024.

38. Netflix

Total certified H-1B filings: 256.

Total employees worldwide: 14,000 as of the end of 2024.

39. Block

Total certified H-1B filings: 231.

Total employees worldwide: 11,372 as of the end of 2024.

40. Pinterest

Total certified H-1B filings: 225.

Total employees worldwide: 4,666 as of the end of 2024.

• TikTok employees say they're experiencing burnout amid reorgs, tough performance goals, and other workplace pressures.
• Current and former TikTok employees told BI it's become common for staffers to go on leave for mental health reasons.
• Some employees said uncertainty around TikTok's US future is also causing stress and demotivation.

In mid-January, ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on TikTok's future in the US, employees at the company were focused on another task: filling out their performance reviews.

These evaluations had become particularly anxiety-inducing for some of the company's 7,000-plus US staffers after it instructed managers last year to grade workers more harshly. A low score on a review could lead to a smaller bonus or a performance-improvement plan, or PIP.

Uncertainty about the company's path forward, combined with fear that they would personally receive negative reviews, made some staffers feel directionless and burned out.

"I see people change from motivated to 'I don't care anymore,'" one current TikTok employee told Business Insider.

TikTok has been placing high demands on its employees as political scrutiny on the company heats up over its owner's ties to China, 10 current and former employees who have worked at the company in the past year told Business Insider. These US staffers spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs and career prospects; their identities are known to BI.

Some of the workplace pressure is particular to TikTok, but it also reflects a broader trend in the tech industry. Companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft have targeted low performers, cut workplace perks, and cracked down on employee dissent in the pursuit of business efficiency.

The trade-off for workplace pressure is high pay and working at the buzziest companies in tech.

"From a career growth standpoint, you have access to huge budgets and big names," a former staffer said of working at TikTok. "Everyone in the industry wants to talk to you."

Still, burnout can take a real human toll, as well as impact a company's operations and bottom line.

Burned out staffers turn to mental health leave

The TikTok staffers who spoke with BI said they felt that burnout — which is defined by the World Health Organization as workplace stress that has not been successfully managed — had become common.

Some employees are addressing burnout by requesting time off for mental health leave, five of the current and former employees said. These staffers worked on three different teams across several offices and spoke directly to colleagues who had taken mental health leave or had done so themselves.

Business Insider was unable to obtain data on how many TikTok employees have used mental health leave, and the company did not respond to requests for comment. But interviews with current and former staffers made clear that mental health — and taking time off for it — has been a topic of discussion among the workforce over the past year.

"We all talked," another former TikTok employee said. "We all side texted. And we all found out pretty quickly whether people were on leave because of burnout."

The former staffer said there was a period when around 20% of their team was out on mental health leave. While TikTok doesn't broadcast why a worker goes on leave, the staffer was told directly by colleagues that they were taking time off for their mental health. A second current staffer said they had direct knowledge of six employees who had requested mental health leave.

The length of leave depended on the individual and the state where they live, but several of the TikTok insiders said two to three months of paid time off was typical. When a staffer goes on leave, their away status and period of time off are typically displayed in internal communication tools to alert colleagues that they are unreachable, without specifying the reason, three current and former employees told BI.

Some employees chose to go on leave because they were exhausted and needed a break after feeling intense pressure to hit their goals, said three of the TikTok insiders, who had either spoken to team members who took time off or gone on leave themselves.

The first former staffer described a moment last year when their team reorganized under new leadership and saw expectations around performance spike.

"It didn't make sense to me," they said. "If you have ambitious goals, you need more head count, tooling, and software."

As performance targets increased, stress followed, a third former staffer said.

"For me, it was just feeling like a failure, like I couldn't do anything right," said the ex-employee, who went on mental health leave while at the company. BI viewed a confirmation email sent to the employee to verify they had been approved for the leave.

Tech's burnout problem

TikTok isn't the only tech company dealing with burnout, which has become increasingly common across the sector. Mental health leave is also on the rise in the US workforce. In a 2024 survey of US business executives and HR professionals conducted by the law firm Littler Mendelson, 74% of respondents saw an increase in "employee requests for leaves of absence or accommodations for mental health-related issues over the last year."

But TikTok faces unique challenges when compared to other US workplaces. For one, its app could shut down in the US in April if it fails to reach a political resolution with the Trump administration. While TikTok has assured US staffers that they would still have jobs even if its app were kicked out of the country, the company rarely addresses its political challenges internally. That's added to overall anxiety, six of the current and former employees told BI.

"The uncertainty is certainly playing a major role in burnout in the sense that we don't know if we're going to have jobs," the second current employee said.

That said, for some staff, dealing with challenging performance standards and the threat of having the business shut down by the US government is worth it for the opportunity to work at a fast-growing company that is reshaping the tech industry. And not everyone at TikTok faces the same pressure to perform, seven of the current and former staffers said.

"I think depending on the team, there has been a more tense environment, but at the same time, I also know plenty of teams where that is not the case," the first current employee said.

TikTok provides various mental health resources to staff, including therapy sessions, via a platform called Lyra Health.

'Building the plane while flying it'

TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, are known for testing many ideas and then pivoting based on what works or flops. Leaders at TikTok sometimes talk about this approach as "building the plane while flying it," a current employee and two former staffers told BI.

As part of that startup ethos, the company regularly reorganizes or lays off teams, changes employees' performance goals, and adds new policies like mandatory return-to-office for some teams.

Some employees said that frequent changes to how they worked, whether it was abruptly getting a new manager or seeing their goals change, made their jobs feel insecure.

"The joke internally was don't get too comfortable because something was going to change," the second former staffer said.

As part of the reorgs, some new team leaders either worked out of China (where ByteDance is headquartered) and required late calls from US teams, or migrated from abroad to work in US offices, seven of the current and former staffers told BI. Managers like Bob Kang and Qing Lan worked on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, before taking on e-commerce and SMB advertising leadership roles at TikTok, for example.

Several of the new executives raised the performance targets for their teams or implemented new policies that increased time at work, such as return-to-office requirements, the seven TikTok insiders said. The TikTok Shop team, under Kang's leadership, recently intensified a return-to-office rule that required employees to be in the office five days a week, specifying that they would need to be physically in the office space for eight hours a day, for instance.

"They have been consolidating under Chinese leadership to some extent," the first current staffer said, referring to Chinese staff coming to the US.

In a December court filing, TikTok said that its US platform is controlled by US employees, subsidiaries, and contractors, but that its recommendation algorithm is developed by a global team.

Other former employees, such as Chloe Shih and Pabel Martinez, have previously raised concerns about the intensity of the company's work culture.

The focus on working long hours isn't new to the China tech scene. Tech firms like ByteDance built massive businesses in the country as part of a "996" work culture that asked employees to work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week (a practice that is now illegal in China). Even as ByteDance has pledged to work a "1075" schedule — 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., five days a week — there remains a sense among some US employees that their Chinese colleagues are constantly working.

"There were a lot of leaders that came in from ByteDance or the China-based teams, and they operated so differently," a fourth former employee said. "There was a cultural perspective that the US and outside of China just doesn't work as fast as China."

The pressure to always be available can have an impact on burnout.

"People are not machines, and giving them breaks to recharge, to think differently, helps our employees be more creative," Jaclyn Margolis, an associate professor who researches organizational behavior at Pepperdine University's Graziadio Business School, told BI.

Failure to address burnout can lead to absenteeism and turnover, said Laura Giurge, an assistant professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The economic impact of burnout in the workplace can be sizable. A 2025 study from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine estimated that employee disengagement and burnout cost US companies between $3,999 and $20,683 a year per disengaged staffer, depending on the level of seniority.

TikTok's 'golden handcuffs' and a tough job market

While working at TikTok can be grueling for some US employees, the company also pays its staff competitively — a key perk. A BI analysis of work-visa disclosures from late 2024 found that with a few exceptions, most of the company's base salary offers were in the six figures in the US.

Fear of losing a high salary acts as a form of "golden handcuffs" for TikTok employees, the third former staffer said.

There is also no guarantee that leaving TikTok for a competitor would reduce workplace stress, as other Big Tech firms have also increased pressure on staff as part of an ongoing efficiency push in the industry.

Even if an employee wants to jump ship, it may be tough to land a new gig, as the tech job market is very tight. As of February, US software development job postings were around 36.5% below their pre-pandemic levels, according to data compiled by the jobs site Indeed.

Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab, said there's uncertainty in the job market and quit rates are very low.

"The tech scene elsewhere has been really rough," a third current employee said. "Feeling kind of stuck."

And for the thousands of employees working in TikTok's US offices, the issue of job security is particularly heightened as we approach April 5, the deadline for TikTok to make a deal that appeases Washington. A divest-or-ban law, which the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional, has targeted ByteDance's ties to China. Without additional government intervention, TikTok could disappear from app stores and potentially cease operating in less than a month.

"Sometimes people wonder why we are doing this job, because in a few weeks, it may no longer be relevant," the first current staffer said.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at dwhateley@businessinsider.com or Signal at @danwhateley.94. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Ashley Rodriguez contributed reporting.

In a media briefing held Monday, the South Korean Personal Information Protection Commission indicated that it had paused new downloads within the country of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's mobile app. The restriction took effect on Saturday and doesn't affect South Korean users who already have the app installed on their devices. The DeepSeek service also remains accessible in South Korea via the web.

Per Reuters, PIPC explained that representatives from DeepSeek acknowledged the company had "partially neglected" some of its obligations under South Korea's data protection laws, which provide South Koreans some of the strictest privacy protections globally.

PIPC investigation division director Nam Seok is quoted by the Associated Press as saying DeepSeek "lacked transparency about third-party data transfers and potentially collected excessive personal information." DeepSeek reportedly has dispatched a representative to South Korea to work through any issues and bring the app into compliance.

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• ByteDance has demoed an AI model that generates lifelike deepfake videos from a single image.
• ByteDance released test videos, including deepfakes of TED Talks and a talking Albert Einstein.
• Tech firms, including Google and Meta, are working on tools to better detect deepfakes.

Researchers at ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, have showcased an AI model that generates full-body deepfake videos from just one image — and the results are scarily impressive.

Unlike some deepfake models that can only animate faces or upper bodies, Bytedance's OmniHuman-1 generates realistic full-body animations that sync gestures and facial expressions with speech or music, the company said.

ByteDance published several dozen test videos, including AI-generated TED Talks and a talking Albert Einstein, to its OmniHuman-lab project page.

The model supports different body proportions and aspect ratios, making the output look more natural, Bytedance researchers said in a paper published Monday that has since caught the attention of the AI community.

"The realism of deepfakes just reached a whole new level with Bytedance's release of OmniHuman-1," said Matt Groh, an assistant professor who specializes in computational social science, in an X post on Tuesday.

OmniHuman-1 is the latest AI model from a Chinese tech company to grab the attention of researchers following the release of DeepSeek's market-shaking R1 model last month.

Venky Balasubramanian, the founder and CEO of tech company Plivo, said in a Tuesday X post, "Another week another Chinese AI model. OmniHuman-1 by Bytedance can create highly realistic human videos using only a single image and an audio track."

ByteDance said its new model, trained on roughly 19,000 hours of human motion data, can create video clips of any length within memory limits and adapt to different input signals.

OmniHuman-1 outperforms previous animation tools in realism and accuracy benchmarks, the researchers said.

Deepfake detection

Deepfakes have become harder to detect as the technology becomes more sophisticated. Google, Meta, and OpenAI have introduced AI watermarking tools, such as SynthID and Meta's Video Seal, to flag synthetic content.

While these tools offer some safeguards, tools are still playing catch-up with the misuse of deepfake technology.

AI-generated videos and voice clones are fueling harassment, fraud, and cyberattacks, with criminals using AI-generated voices to scam victims. US regulators have issued alerts, while US legislation like the TAKE IT DOWN Act aims to tackle deepfake porn.

The World Economic Forum said last month that deepfakes are exposing security flaws and are expected to "create a misinformation and disinformation apocalypse."

Researchers from TikTok owner ByteDance have demoed a new AI system, OmniHuman-1, that can generate perhaps the most realistic deepfake videos to date. Deepfaking AI is a commodity. There’s no shortage of apps that can insert someone into a photo, or make a person appear to say something they didn’t actually say. But most deepfakes […]

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• President Trump has proposed that the US government get a stake in TikTok as part of a sale.
• But can the government actually own a piece of TikTok?
• Legal analysts said it could spark free-speech issues that would make the app hard to run.

TikTok needs to find a new owner for its US app to comply with a divest-or-ban law. Could it be the government?

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly proposed that the government get some type of stake in TikTok.

"What I'm thinking about saying to somebody is buy it and give half to the United States," he said during a January 21 press conference.

In its bid to buy TikTok, AI company Perplexity AI answered Trump's call. This week, the company updated its proposal to merge TikTok's US business with its own by offering the US government half of the new entity. That's on the condition that it goes public at a valuation of at least $300 billion, a source familiar with the offer told Business Insider.

But what would happen to TikTok if the US government owns part of it? Is there a precedent for this?

While the government has controlling shares in other companies, such as Amtrak, owning a piece of a major social app would be new territory.

"It's a social-media company that has a significant platform demonstrably for political reach and communication," said Aram Gavoor, associate dean at the George Washington University Law School who focuses on issues in tech, regulation, and national security. The ownership would bring about "novel constitutional questions with regard to speech," he said.

For a TikTok sale involving the government to work, the dealmakers would need to set up editorial guardrails to prevent the US from encroaching on its users' First Amendment rights. Even then, legal analysts told BI that TikTok's content moderation, such as removing videos that violate its policies, could create an avalanche of legal challenges from the app's users.

"What would be necessary, though I'm not sure it would be sufficient, is an extremely strict separation between the government and this new TikTok entity, especially when it comes to anything editorial," said Alan Rozenshtein, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who previously served as an advisor at the Justice Department.

Let's walk through some of the big questions around a TikTok deal.

Can the government legally own TikTok?

If the government grabs a stake in TikTok, it wouldn't be the first time it's done so in a company in a moment of flux.

During the Great Recession, the government was deeply involved in various businesses, bailing out automakers and banks and taking a controlling stake in AIG, for example.

It also owns consumer-facing institutions like the US Postal Service and Amtrak.

There is some precedent for the government's financial involvement in media companies, too. The government funds the broadcasting network Voice of America, and Congress partially funds NPR and PBS through appropriations to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Each of those organizations has strict guidelines to protect editorial independence, however. NPR's ethics handbook says that its journalists have "full and final authority over all journalistic decisions." PBS said its content "must be free of undue influence from third-party funders, political interests, and other outside forces." And Voice of America has a firewall that "prohibits interference by any U.S. government official in the objective, independent reporting of news."

A version of TikTok partially owned by the government would likely need to establish similar editorial barriers as its media counterparts and provide assurances of independence.

Even if a TikTok deal establishes a government firewall, it might not hold up in court

Even if TikTok sets up contract language to keep the government out of its editorial work, it may not matter in the courts. Other government-owned entities that have attempted to define themselves as independent have faced First Amendment lawsuits and lost.

In 1994, Amtrak was sued after it tried to block a billboard from displaying political content in one of its stations. The Supreme Court ruled that the company, as a government entity, had violated the First Amendment rights of the billboard's creator.

The Supreme Court said that Amtrak, by virtue of being federally owned and controlled, "was subject to First Amendment restrictions in the same way as any other federal actor," said Jennifer Safstrom, a law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School who directs its First Amendment clinic.

In its opinion on the case, the court wrote that even though Congress attempted to establish Amtrak as independent from the US government, "it is not for Congress to make the final determination of Amtrak's status as a Government entity for purposes of determining the constitutional rights of citizens affected by its actions."

The case establishes that the government's self-characterization of how it owns a company may not stand on its own. "Courts will look beyond formal language to assess the extent of the government's entanglement," Safstrom said.

Would a government-owned TikTok be allowed to block porn and hate speech?

Many social apps block pornography and hate speech (and a ton of other stuff like content promoting eating disorders) as part of their community guidelines. But those types of expression are generally protected under the First Amendment, and a government-owned TikTok may face a flurry of legal challenges if it removes videos.

These are "uncharted waters," Safstrom said. "It's hard to know how expansive that world of litigation could be given the volume of users on that platform."

If TikTok continually gets challenged for pulling down hate speech and other unsavory content and stops a lot of its moderation work, it would be "essentially unusable and certainly very unprofitable," Rozenshtein said.

Who would control the TikTok algorithm?

The First Amendment protects the speech of TikTok users. But what about TikTok's algorithm? If the US government owns a part of TikTok, can it limit what users see?

That question remains up in the air, as algorithm decisions may qualify as "government speech," legal analysts said.

"If the government has a platform, it's not obligated to promote every person's particular point of view," Rozenshtein said. The government often makes choices as to what content it shares or doesn't share, such as last year when the State Department worked with the private sector to promote a set of music artists internationally as part of a diplomacy initiative.

He said the postal service offers a possible comparison for understanding why the government may have more discretion over the TikTok algorithm versus users' videos. The post office gets to decide what art it features on stamps, but it doesn't have the authority to limit most of what people write in the letters they send in the mail.

Ultimately, there are many unknowns as to what will happen around a TikTok sale, if ByteDance opts to sell it at all. Earlier this month, TikTok's lawyer said divesting its US app from its parent company would be "extraordinarily difficult" over any timeline.

And, of course, the Chinese government could block a ByteDance deal.

Asked on January 21 about a TikTok sale, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson seemed open to letting a deal be "independently decided," though he added that "China's law and regulations should be observed."

Representatives for the White House, TikTok, and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment.

It was apparently a busy weekend for key players involved in Donald Trump's efforts to make a deal to save TikTok.

Perhaps the most appealing option for ByteDance could be if Trump blessed a merger between TikTok and Perplexity AI—a San Francisco-based AI search company worth about $9 billion that appears to view a TikTok video content acquisition as a path to compete with major players like Google and OpenAI.

On Sunday, Perplexity AI submitted a revised merger proposal to TikTok-owner ByteDance, reviewed by CNBC, which sources told AP News included feedback from the Trump administration.

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The Trump administration is negotiating a deal that would see Oracle take over TikTok alongside new U.S. investors, according to a report by NPR. Lawmakers passed a bill last year forcing Chinese parent company ByteDance to either sell TikTok or see it banned in the U.S. The app briefly went dark before the law took […]

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TikTok owner ByteDance is reportedly still searching for non-sale options to stay in the US after the Supreme Court upheld a national security law requiring that TikTok's US operations either be shut down or sold to a non-foreign adversary.

Last weekend, TikTok briefly went dark in the US, only to come back online hours later after Donald Trump reassured ByteDance that the US law would not be enforced. Then, shortly after Trump took office, he signed an executive order delaying enforcement for 75 days while he consulted with advisers to "pursue a resolution that protects national security while saving a platform used by 170 million Americans."

Trump's executive order did not suggest that he intended to attempt to override the national security law's ban-or-sale requirements. But that hasn't stopped ByteDance, board member Bill Ford told World Economic Forum (WEF) attendees, from searching for a potential non-sale option that "could involve a change of control locally to ensure it complies with US legislation," Bloomberg reported.

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• President Trump signed an executive order on Monday giving TikTok 75 more days to operate in the US.
• The move came after TikTok briefly shut down to comply with a divest-or-ban law.
• Legal analysts say Trump's order may not be enough to bring TikTok back to US app stores.

TikTok is back online for existing US users after briefly going dark over the weekend to comply with a divest-or-ban law.

But it's still gone from US app stores. The app may face an uphill battle to get back there despite President Trump's executive order on Monday granting TikTok and its partners 75 more days to operate without drawing the ire of the Justice Department.

Trump's executive order directed the attorney general to send a letter to TikTok's service providers telling them they would not face liability related to the law, which required TikTok's owner, ByteDance, to separate from its US assets by January 19. ByteDance did not follow through on that requirement.

Even with Trump's assurance of non-enforcement, the general counsels at Apple or Google's parent company Alphabet may be too risk-averse to add TikTok back to their stores, legal analysts told Business Insider.

The divest-or-ban law, if enforced, could impose hundreds of billions of dollars in fines on service providers that don't cut ties with TikTok and other ByteDance apps, a terrifying prospect for any company lawyer. A letter from the attorney general promising they won't act on the law may not cut it.

"If I were the GC of Alphabet or Apple, I don't think a letter would assuage my fears," said G.S. Hans, a clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School who last year joined an amicus brief opposing the divest-or-ban law.

However, he added: "The heads of those companies may differ with their legal counsel and potentially even override them."

The executive order contains language that might raise red flags for in-house lawyers, too, said Matthew Schettenhelm, a litigation and policy analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

In section three of the executive order, for example, the document states that nothing in the order shall "impair or otherwise affect" the "authority granted by law to an executive department or agency," which seems to undercut the idea that the attorney general would never take action under any circumstance, Schettenhelm said.

"The whole thing is a recipe for a legal mess," Schettenhelm said. "It, therefore, shouldn't make service providers feel comfortable about violating a law tied to such massive liability exposure."

While legal teams at Apple and Google may not be rushing to bring TikTok back to their stores, the stakes for TikTok are different. The company needs to be in app stores to sign up new users and send technical updates to its existing ones. Without those updates, the quality of its app would likely degrade over time.

Apple and Google may still decide to play ball

Other legal analysts were more bullish about the possibility that TikTok could return to app stores following Trump's order.

Aram Gavoor, associate dean for academic affairs at the George Washington University Law School, thought the order would offer an effective "safe harbor" to TikTok's partners, including the app stores. He was not concerned about the apparent contradiction in the third section of the order, describing that language as a "boilerplate."

"Once that attorney general letter is transmitted and received, you have a safe harbor to continue hosting that app on your store," Gavoor said. "It's almost like the IRS issuing a no-action letter for a taxpayer within a given tax year. This conduct is not unlawful, and therefore, that's a basis upon which you can engage in continued lawful conduct."

Apple and Google have not indicated yet whether they will add TikTok back to their app stores after Trump's order. Neither company responded to a request for comment; Google earlier declined to comment.

This weekend, as it removed TikTok and other ByteDance apps from its store, Apple wrote in a statement that it was "obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates," which included complying with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• On Sunday, TikTok and some US tech companies ignored a TikTok-ban law at the urging of Donald Trump.
• Trump wasn't president at the time. Once he became president, he signed an order to put the ban on hold.
• Does Trump have that power? It's unclear. That's a problem for tech companies.

Here's a 2025 conundrum for Big Tech companies: Do they follow the president's orders? Or do they follow the law?

That's what the likes of Apple, Google, and Oracle are grappling with following a chaotic weekend that saw TikTok voluntarily shut itself down in the US, then restart less than a day later, claiming that "President Trump" said it was OK to do so.

A couple of problems with that argument: Donald Trump wasn't president of the United States this weekend — Joe Biden was still in the White House. And yes: Trump immediately signed an executive order after he once again became president on Monday telling TikTok and other tech companies to ignore a law that says TikTok can't operate in the US while it's owned by a Chinese company. But it's far from clear how much weight Trump's order holds.

So in the very near term, attorneys and executives at tech companies need to decide whether they're willing to take Trump's word, or if they need additional assurances.

At the moment, it looks like Oracle, controlled by Larry Ellison, a Trump backer, is going with Trump's assurances and is providing cloud services that are keeping TikTok running in the US. Apple and Google, which used to distribute TikTok via their app stores, don't seem convinced: TikTok disappeared from their stores on Sunday and has yet to return. That means US users can have all the TikTok they want, but it prevents TikTok from updating the app for maintenance and repairs — something that could eventually cause problems. (I've asked Oracle for comment. Google declined to comment, and Apple didn't respond to requests for comment.)

One possible out for Google and Apple: Trump has ordered his attorney general, who seems likely to be Pam Bondi, to send letters to Apple, Google, and other providers giving them the all clear to ignore the law. But Bondi isn't attorney general yet, and even when Apple et al. get that letter, it's not clear whether it will be enough to satisfy them.

I'm not going to get into the weeds about the nature of executive orders vs. laws — or whether Trump's claim that he can at least temporarily override a law because of national security concerns would hold up in court. Suffice it to say that there isn't any clarity about any of this: Even Trump allies like Sen. Tom Cotton and House Speaker Mike Johnson have put out statements that seem to conflict with Trump's statements.

The point is that no one can say, with a straight face, that they have 100% confidence about whether the law, passed overwhelmingly by Congress last year and upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court decision last week, is binding. That's an astonishing place for us to be.

It's also not one that we can pin completely on Trump. In his last days in office, Biden also said he wouldn't enforce the law he signed last year — though he did it via anonymous officials speaking with reporters, and eventually his press secretary, and not via an official order. At the same time, some Democrats who voted for the bill in the spring, like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, spent the past few days arguing that the ban in the sell-or-ban law they approved should be delayed.

But Trump is taking the uncertainty and supercharging it: In social media statements and a press conference he held Monday, he seemed to suggest that the US government itself might end up owning TikTok. Or that maybe it would be American companies that own half the operation. He also argued that TikTok's Chinese ownership really doesn't matter, since the US already uses lots of other stuff made in China, like "telephones." And that even if China is snooping on US users, that probably also doesn't matter because TikTok is mostly used by kids, and, "If China's going to get information about young kids … I dunno. To be honest, I think we have bigger problems than them."

It's worth watching all three minutes of this White House press conference clip, just to get a sense of how off-the-cuff Trump seems to be treating the whole thing. Imagine running a trillion-dollar company and being forced to decipher this:

We have been here before, of course. America and the rest of the world spent much of the first Trump administration trying to figure out whether Trump really meant what he was saying, or if he could actually act on what he was saying, and whether he'd change his mind a little while later.

One big difference this time around: Tech executives, along with many other US leaders, are scrambling to tell Trump how supportive they are of his presidency this time. But it's one thing to praise Trump, or cut him a check, or to be conspicuously on camera during his inauguration. Trusting that his say-so is good enough to get you out of trouble for violating a law — if that's what actually happens — is brand-new ground.

TikTok disappeared for a portion of the weekend, following a Supreme Court decision that upheld a 2024 federal law requiring the app to cease operations in the US unless it was sold by its Chinese owner, ByteDance. TikTok is gradually resuming service in the US, but it has an unclear road ahead.

TikTok started greeting US users late Saturday night with a notice stating that "Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now," noting that "A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US."

The message changed after it was first deployed, adding a note that "We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!"

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