China Weighs Sale of TikTok US to Elon Musk as a Possible Option

As reported by Bloomberg, Chinese officials are evaluating a potential option involving Elon Musk acquiring TikTok’s US operations. This is of course if the company fails to fend off a controversial ban. Beijing officials strongly prefer that TikTok remains under the ownership of parent ByteDance Ltd., and the company is contesting the impending ban with an appeal to the US Supreme Court.

However, the justices signaled during arguments on Jan. 10 that they are likely to uphold the law. Senior Chinese officials had already begun to debate contingency plans for TikTok as part of an expansive discussion on how to work with Donald Trump’s administration, one of which involves Musk. With more than 170 million users in the US, TikTok could bolster X’s efforts to attract advertisers. Musk also founded a separate artificial intelligence company, xAI, that could benefit from the huge amounts of data generated from TikTok.

TikTok’s US operations could be valued at around $40 billion to $50 billion, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and Damian Reimertz estimated last year. That’s a substantial sum even for the world’s richest person. It’s not clear how Musk could pull off such a transaction, whether it would require the sale of other holdings, or whether the US government would approve. He paid $44 billion for Twitter in 2022.

There have also been rumors that Mr.Beast and some billionaires are interested in purchasing TikTok.

The post China Weighs Sale of TikTok US to Elon Musk as a Possible Option appeared first on EDMTunes.