Responding to reports citing a takeover as a possible scenario should the medium be banned from operating in the US
TikTok today dismissed as “pure fantasy” reports that Chinese authorities are considering Elon Musk’s takeover of its US operations if the popular platform is banned in the United States at the end of the week.
“Senior Chinese officials had already begun discussing contingency plans for TikTok as part of a wide-ranging discussion about how to deal with Donald Trump’s administration, one of which involves Musk,” sources told Bloomberg on Monday. they are not named. “They can’t expect us to comment on a pure fantasy,” a TikTok spokesperson told AFP today.
“According to a scenario being considered by the Chinese government, X (…) would take control of American TikTok and manage the two businesses together,” Bloomberg had clarified, estimating the value of TikTok’s business in the United States between 40 and 50 billion dollars. The article pointed out, however, that the discussions were “preliminary”.
The US last year passed a law forcing Chinese entertainment giant ByteDance to sell TikTok by January 19, 2025, or it will be banned in the country, where the app has 170 million users. The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which on Friday heard arguments from both sides: Washington says it wants to prevent risks of spying and manipulation by Beijing, while the social network and unions complain that the law in question stifles freedom of expression.
A clear majority of Supreme Court justices appeared inclined to approve the ban. The Chinese government and ByteDance have always been openly opposed to a concession of TikTok’s US division. Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, had made a surprise by expressing in 2022 his desire to buy Twitter. After months of back and forth and attacks on the platform, he had ended up acquiring it for 44 billion. dollars.
The world’s richest man later renamed it X and used it widely to support Donald Trump, in addition to his large financial contributions to the then-republican presidential candidate. Donald Trump, who will be US president again in a week, had attempted to ban TikTok at the end of his first term in 2020, again in the name of national security. It has since revised its positions and asserts that it has a “weakness” in the application and its mainly young audience.
In addition to his electric car and rocket businesses, Elon Musk co-founded other businesses, most recently xAI, which specializes in genetic artificial intelligence, which requires mountains of fresh data — and social networking sites are ideal to feed artificial intelligence models. The businessman also secured a political role. Donald Trump has tasked him with achieving massive savings in federal budgets.
