'I Have Not Put In A Bid For TikTok', Elon Musk Clarifies He Has No Interest In Taking Over Company's US Operations
Elon Musk said, "I have not put in a bid for TikTok.”
Speculations were surfacing earlier about Chinese officials reaching out to X owner Elon Musk for the acquisition of TikTok's operations in the US. Now Musk has stated that he has no interest in acquiring TikTok, the widely popular short video app currently facing potential bans in the United States over concerns related to its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
Musk, who heads the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under US President Donald Trump, made this clarification during a summit organized by The WELT Group, a division of the German media conglomerate Axel Springer SE, in late January.
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What Did Elon Musk Say?
As speculation about TikTok's fate in the US continues, President Trump had suggested he would be open to Musk purchasing the ByteDance-owned platform. However, Musk addressed this directly at the event, stating, “I have not put in a bid for TikTok.”
Musk made it clear that he does not use TikTok and he isn't even familiar with the format of the app. He added, “I don’t have any plans for what I would do if I had TikTok.”
While talking about his earlier acquisition of X (formerly called Twitter) as unusual, Musk said “I’m not chomping at the bit to acquire TikTok, I do not acquire companies in general, it’s quite rare,” reported Reuters.
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, was granted a deadline until January to divest its U.S. operations or risk being banned, amid concerns from lawmakers about the security of American user data. The primary worry stems from the company’s Chinese origins, raising fears that Beijing could potentially demand access to information on U.S. users.
Nevertheless, after assuming office on January 20, President Trump signed an executive order to postpone the implementation of the ban. TikTok currently boasts around 170 million users in the United States.
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