US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he had found a buyer for social media platform TikTok, which he described as a group of "very wealthy people" whose identities he will reveal in about two weeks.

"We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way," Trump said in an interview on Fox.

"It's a group of very wealthy people."

"I think I'll need probably China's approval. I think President Xi will probably do it."

Trump earlier this month had extended to September 17 a deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the US assets of TikTok despite a law that mandated a sale or shutdown without significant progress.

A deal had been in the works this spring that would have spun off TikTok's US operations into a new US-based firm, majority-owned and operated by US investors.

The deal was however put on hold, after China indicated it would not approve it following Trump's announcements of steep tariffs on Chinese goods. (Reuters)