(Credit: Zain bin Awais)
After being touted as a potential buyer earlier this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has denied interest in acquiring TikTok’s US operations.
“I have not put in a bid for TikTok,” Musk said at a conference hosted by German billionaire Mathias Döpfner. He added that he doesn’t “have any plans for what I would do if I had TikTok,” claiming that he doesn’t use and isn’t familiar with the platform.
The X owner added: “I do not acquire companies in general; it’s quite rare,” calling the 2022 acquisition of the company previously called Twitter (now X) “unusual.”
In January, Bloomberg reported that Chinese officials were analyzing the possibility of Musk, with his close ties to President Donald Trump, acquiring the platform. That same month, Trump said he would be open to Musk buying the platform "if he wanted to buy it."
However, in January, China-based TikTok owner ByteDance strongly denied reports that its US business could be sold to Musk, dubbing them “pure fiction.”
Under a law signed by President Biden last year, TikTok was ordered to divest its US operations on national security grounds. That was supposed to have been done by Jan. 19, but TikTok fought the ban in court. It lost at all levels, but President Trump—who started the TikTok ban issue himself in 2020—gave the company a 75-day reprieve when he returned to office.
It was reported last month that the Trump administration was attempting to broker a deal for enterprise software giant Oracle, along with other investors, to acquire TikTok’s operations. However, this has not been confirmed at the time of writing.
Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order that directs the Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce to deliver a plan within 90 days for the creation of a sovereign wealth fund, which is a type of investment fund owned by the government. "We're going to be doing something, perhaps, with TikTok," Trump said when signing the EO.