The Chinese government is considering selling TikTok to Elon Musk, it has been reported.
Last week, the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform announced plans to cease operations in the US this coming Sunday (January 19) after the site and its parent company, ByteDance, lost an appeal against a law seeking to ban it.
Incoming POTUS Donald Trump had asked the US Supreme Court to delay a potential ban late last month. He said he “opposes banning TikTok” and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office”.
Now, according to Bloomberg, the Chinese government – which holds a significant stake in TikTok – is looking at numerous options for the app’s future, including a possible sale to Musk.
The tech billionaire and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla purchased Twitter for a staggering $44billion in 2022. Musk proceeded to make various controversial changes to the site, including changing its name to ‘X’, removing the blue tick system, introducing paid-for subscriptions and firing numerous top executives at the company.
In October 2023, it was reported that X/Twitter was worth $19billion – less than half of the sum Musk paid to acquire it.
The proposed TikTok sale would see Musk’s X/Twitter take control of the platform’s US operations, creating a merger of the two sites. The potential deal is expected to be valued at between $40billion and $50billion.
It is said that the Chinese government has long been unwilling to sell the app and would still rather not do so. ByteDance claimed that it had no intentions to sell TikTok last December.
Should the US Supreme Court uphold a ban requiring ByteDance to divest, however, the Chinese government may consider striking a deal with Musk.
Bloomberg claims that the sale could serve as a potential point of reconciliation for the Trump administration and China amid upcoming negotiations on issues such as tariffs and exports. But TikTok has denied that such a deal is on the cards, calling the Bloomberg article “pure fiction”.
Additionally, it is reported that the proposed sale is “very preliminary” at this time (via Consequence), with talks having only taken place high up within the Chinese government.
It is currently unclear if Musk himself has been approached about the deal, but he has previously expressed his support for TikTok remaining accessible to users in the US.
Musk is a close ally of Trump, and was appointed by the next President to lead his new Department Of Government Efficiency following Trump’s historic US election win last November.
The X owner has also established a position as an influential and popular businessman in China thanks to the success of his electric car company, Tesla.
The sell-or-ban measure for TikTok was issued into law by outgoing President Joe Biden last year. This came after a long-running dispute over claims that the company’s ownership structure could allow the Chinese government to gain access to the data of its millions of American users.
To date, over 30 US states, Canada and the European Union have separately banned the app from use on government-owned devices over concerns it could pose a security risk. India banned the app nationwide in 2020, while Taiwan and Afghanistan did the same in 2022.
The consequence of a US TikTok ban could have a significant impact on the music industry. A recent report by the platform claimed that a majority of US and UK chart-topping singles in 2024 were associated with a TikTok trend.
Last May, TikTok also established a new licensing agreement with Universal Music Group, after the label initially withdrew its artists’ music from the platform as a result of both parties’ inability to work out a new deal. The site later shut its streaming service, TikTok Music.
In other news, Elon Musk promised to “make games great again” with the launch of his new AI studio, xAI.