Washington: On Monday, US President Donald Trump informed reporters that Microsoft is negotiating to buy TikTok and that he hopes to see a bidding war for the app.
Just before a legislation mandating its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to either sell the app on national security grounds or risk a ban went into force on January 19, TikTok, which has over 170 million American users, was momentarily taken offline. Following his inauguration on January 20, Trump issued an executive order attempting to postpone the law’s implementation by seventy-five days.
Trump stated last week that he was in discussions with several parties about purchasing TikTok and will probably make a decision regarding the future of the well-known app in 30 days. If Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to purchase the social media app, the US president has already stated that he was amenable to the idea. Musk hasn’t, however, addressed Trump’s proposition in public.
More recently, an AI startup called Perplexity AI proposed to merge with TikTok on Sunday, according to a source, with the US government eventually owning up to half of the combined business. According to reports, Microsoft is considering acquiring TikTok for the second time.
Citing national security concerns, Trump ordered TikTok to separate its US version from ByteDance during his first administration. In 2020, Microsoft was the leading bidder, but the negotiations quickly broke down, and Trump’s divestment campaign came to an end a few months after he left office.
That arrangement was described by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as the “strangest thing I’ve ever worked on.” In 2021, he claimed that the US government had a “specific set of requirements and then it just disappeared.”