Olusegun Ariyo
Billionaire Elon Musk has said that he was not interested in buying TikTok, the popular short-video app that the United States has been trying to ban over national security concerns with its Chinese owner, ByteDance.
Musk said he had not put in a bid for TikTok, a week after US President Donald Trump said he was open to Musk buying the ByteDance-owned app if he wanted to do so.
“I don’t have any plans for what I would do if I had TikTok. I’m not chomping at the bit to acquire TikTok, I do not acquire companies in general, it’s quite rare,” Musk said.
The billionaire stated that he does not use the short video app personally, and was not familiar with the app’s format, adding that his billion-dollar acquisition of social media platform Twitter, now called X, was unusual.
Recall that President Trump signed an executive order seeking to delay the enforcement of a ban on the popular short-video app that was slated to be shuttered on January 19.
Urban Express News Online reports that ByteDance was given the January deadline to sell the US assets of TikTok or face a US ban, following lawmakers’ concerns that the app poses national security risks because China could compel the company to share the data of its US users.
Trump has said that he was in talks with multiple people over TikTok’s purchase and would likely have a decision on the app’s future this month.
