With TikTok only having until January 19 before they will be banned in the US, Bloomberg reports that Chinese government have allegedly discussed that parent company ByteDance might sell the US operations of TikTok to Elon Musk.
While ByteDance wants to keep TikTok’s US operations under its ownership, senior Chinese Officials have been working on different contingency plans once the ban will be implemented on January 19–with one of the options being to sell the US operations of TikTok to Elon Musk.
According to Bloomberg’s sources, the option to sell TikTok to Musk is due to the latter being one of the closest allies of incoming US President Donald Trump. Musk was recently tapped for a major role in the Trump administration to improve government efficiency.
With that scenario in mind, what might happen is that Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) will take control of TikTok’s US operations. Aside from making good use of X’s user database in the US, this deal might benefit Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company with the amount of data TikTok has.
While Musk and his representatives did not comment, Musk thinks TikTok should not be banned in the US back in April. ByteDance and TikTok representatives also didn’t comment on the matter as of writing.