Trump White House weighing Tencent’s stakes in major game companies

The Trump White House is reportedly debating whether Tencent will be allowed to keep its ownership stakes across the games industry. According to the Financial Times report, senior officials have discussed the issue in recent weeks, and a planned Tuesday meeting between cabinet officials was postponed because of scheduling problems.

The FT says the talks are happening ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to China later this month. At the center of it is a long-running investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) that began under the previous Biden administration. The concern, per the report, is that Tencent’s investments could give it access to data tied to millions of American players.

Tencent’s footprint in games is huge. It owns Riot Games and Turtle Rock Studios outright, and it holds a 28% stake in Epic Games. Internationally, it’s tied to companies like Supercell, Sumo Digital, Funcom, Klei Entertainment, and Yager, and it also has minority stakes in publishers and studios including Ubisoft (and Ubisoft’s newer subsidiary Vantage Studios), Techland, Krafton, Remedy, and Paradox.

The FT report says some officials during the Biden era pushed for CFIUS to force Tencent to divest, arguing the company’s gaming investments could become a “significant intelligence collection source.” Instead, the US Treasury reportedly moved toward data protections as the remedy. Supercell, based in Finland, was singled out in the report as a particular risk because of its large US user base.

The FT also notes CFIUS agencies reportedly didn’t agree on a single approach. Tencent was later added to a Pentagon list of companies said to have ties to the Chinese military, and the company has denied any military connection.