A deal to sell TikTok's US business to Oracle and Walmart could be on the brink of collapse.
Former US President Donald Trump previously demanded that owner ByteDance divest its US operations amid security concerns and while Oracle and Walmart have been in talks with TikTok since September to finalise an agreement, it appears the deal could now be postponed or even scrapped altogether.
Reflecting on the speculation, Dan Ives, from investment analyst firm WedBush, said: "In this game of high-stakes poker it's very possible that the TikTok sale ultimately never happens, depending on US policy in what would be a seminal shift for the US towards China on technology policy, and send an 'olive branch' signal to Beijing."
TikTok - which currently has more than 800 million users worldwide, including 100 million in the US - has so far remain tight-lipped about the sale speculation.
Despite this, Ives suggested that it might be in TikTok's interests to close the deal.
He explained, according to the BBC: "ByteDance and its board may decide to go ahead with this deal once it goes through a White House and [Committee on Foreign Investment in the US] review and eliminate any lingering security concerns around the TikTok platform going forward."
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