Why TikTok America’s Growth Could Surge

Our long international nightmare may soon be over. Both China and the U.S. seem to be in agreement about the terms under which TikTok U.S. will be sold to a new company majority-owned by Americans, judging by a statement overnight from a Chinese government official. We don’t know the details, including the full investor lineup in the new TikTok, whether the U.S. government will take a stake (as Trump earlier this year suggested should happen) or the price being paid. A longer-term question is how the new U.S.-only version of TikTok will fare as a business.

In sheer revenue terms, TikTok America (as the company was to be called as of earlier this year) is likely to be second among social media firms to Meta in revenue, well ahead of other social media firms like Snap, Pinterest, X and Reddit. That’s based on our report in April that TikTok parent ByteDance’s international revenue—primarily TikTok—rose 63% to $39 billion in 2024. Even if TikTok only accounts for $30 billion of that, the U.S. version seems likely to be the majority of that.