Chinese officials are considering selling the US operations of TikTok to Elon Musk, Bloomberg has reported.
The deal would see TikTok’s US operations being controlled by X.
Bloomberg notes the 170 million American users of TikTok could provide valuable data to Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI.
TikTok’s US operations are valued at an estimated $65 billion to $80 billion.
Musk has an estimated net worth of $672 billion, but nearly all of that wealth is tied up in other ventures like Tesla, Starlink and SpaceX.
Since Bloomberg’s report, TikTok has denied the reports.
“We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction,” a representative told Variety.
The South African-born tech mogul bought Twitter for $71 billion in 2022.
Since then, millions of users and many major advertisers have left the platform and the workforce at the company was halved.
Bloomberg reported a purchase of TikTok would make it easier for X to attract advertisers.
Owning TikTok would give Elon Musk an even more powerful voice in the public discourse, Monash University’s head of politics Zareh Ghazarian told 9news.com.au.
“Mr Musk has had really strong views about what the internet should be like, what content should be available, and I would suspect that sort of thinking would flow into TikTok,” he said.
“But it may also have it may also be a bit of a double-edged sword.
“It may be that people who don’t necessarily agree with his views on certain things may either find other sorts of platforms or withdraw from that platform altogether.”
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In April, the US passed a bipartisan law to force the sale of TikTok if it wanted to keep operating in America.
The Biden administration has long argued TikTok’s algorithm was manipulating young Americans.
Its parent company ByteDance is now considering whether they want to sell the business or shut it down.
The ban is set to take place on January 19 unless it is sold.
ByteDance had hoped the US Supreme Court would offer a last-minute reprieve for the company.
But after hearing arguments in a two-and-a-half hour hearing on Friday, the Supreme Court seemed inclined to uphold the law.
