American billionaire Elon Musk is not interested in buying the TikTok app, which the US is trying to ban due to national security concerns.
American billionaire Elon Musk is not interested in buying the TikTok app, which the US is trying to ban due to national security concerns.
As Reuters reports, Musk said that he has not applied to buy TikTok and has no plans to do anything with the application because he does not use it and does not know its format.
«I’m in no rush to buy TikTok, I rarely buy companies,» Musk said, adding that he usually builds companies «from scratch,» and Twitter, which was renamed X, was an exception.
A week ago, Donald Trump said he was in talks with several people about buying TikTok and was going to make a decision on what to do with the app in a month.
Earlier, the American president expressed his willingness to allow billionaire Elon Musk to buy TikTok if he wanted to.
In January, it was reported that TikTok could avoid a ban in the US if it was acquired by an American owner. It was speculated that such a buyer could be Elon Musk, a close ally of Donald Trump.
Recall, in late December, newly elected US President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to postpone the TikTok ban, which was supposed to take effect on January 19, the day before his inauguration.
The US House of Representatives passed a bill in March 2024 that could ban the social network TikTok in the US. The bill was supported by the US Senate in April, and the document was signed into law by former President Joe Biden that same month.
The law took effect on January 19. Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok during his first term as president, but reversed his stance during this year’s presidential campaign and promised to «save» the app. He explained this by saying that he wanted to maintain «competition» with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which he criticized for allegedly censoring right-wing voices. The latter said on January 7 that Meta would work with Trump «to confront governments around the world that are persecuting American companies and increasing censorship.»
At the same time, the publication noted that the possibility of buying the app still remains. This week, Trump signed a separate executive order that, he said, instructed officials to create a sovereign US fund that could be used to promote the sale of TikTok.
ByteDance has publicly refused to sell TikTok, although potential buyers have said they hope the Supreme Court’s decision upholding a national security law that forces the company to either sell or shut down the service in the U.S. could prompt it to reconsider. It also may depend on more than just the company — the Chinese government would also have to approve any transaction.
