China mulls selling TikTok US ops to Musk: report
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Chinese officials are reportedly considering a sale of TikTok’s US operations to billionaire Elon Musk as the video-sharing platform faces a US law requiring its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to divest, Bloomberg News reported Monday.
The report, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter, outlined a scenario being discussed in Beijing where Musk's social media company X would purchase TikTok from Chinese owner ByteDance and merge it with the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The report estimated the value of TikTok's US operations at between $40 billion and $50 billion.
Although Musk is currently ranked as the world's wealthiest person, Bloomberg said it was unclear how Musk could execute the transaction or if he would need to sell other assets.
The US government passed a law last year requiring TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance to either sell the wildly popular platform or shut it down. The law goes into effect Sunday, a day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
The US government alleges TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users and is a conduit for spreading propaganda. Both China and ByteDance strongly deny the claims.
TikTok has challenged the law, taking its case to the US Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on Friday. During the hearing, a majority of both conservative and liberal justices on the nine-member bench appeared skeptical of arguments by TikTok’s lawyer that forcing a sale would violate First Amendment free speech rights.
Bloomberg characterized Beijing's consideration of a possible Musk transaction as "still preliminary," noting that Chinese officials have yet to reach a consensus on how to proceed.
It said it was unclear how much ByteDance knew of the Chinese government’s planning.
TikTok did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment, but a representative was quoted by Variety as saying: "We can't be expected to comment on pure fiction."
Musk, a close ally of Trump, is expected to play an influential role in Washington over the next four years.
He also runs electric car company Tesla, which has a major factory in China and counts the country as one of the automaker’s biggest markets.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to enact new tariffs on Chinese goods, which would expand a trade war begun during his first term and largely upheld, and in some cases supplemented, by outgoing President Joe Biden.