TikTok is reportedly facing regulatory hurdles as it bids to build a data center in Australia.

The Chinese-owned social media firm has reportedly considered a facility in Australia since 2024, but has yet to gain approval from the country’s Foreign Investment Review Board, which governs which overseas firms can set up down under.

According to the Australian Financial Review, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance would like to build a 100MW campus in New South Wales or Victoria.

The firm apparently asked local data center developers to submit proposals earlier this year, but has yet to get the OK to go ahead with the project from the government.

FIRB has to approve any data center project where more than 10 percent of the facility is foreign-owned, and the AFR report said lobbying firm Anacta Strategies is working on behalf of TikTok to secure permission.

TikTok has markedly expanded its own data center footprint in recent years, both to meet growing demand, and to try to assuage regional governmental concerns about data being sent to China.

In Europe, TikTok operates a data center in Ireland, is building another, and uses a huge Green Mountain facility in Norway.

Meanwhile, the firm’s status in the US remains uncertain, with a nationwide ban on the platform still pending as President Donald Trump seeks to push through a sale of its American operations to a consortium of locally-based companies led by Oracle.

Unless the sale is completed, TikTok will be banned in the US from January 2026, though this deadline has been moved by Trump on several occasions already.