Billionaire Elon Musk said that he was not interested in purchasing TikTok, the popular short-video app that the US has been trying to ban over national security concerns with its Chinese owner ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動).
Musk’s comments, made late last month, were released online on Saturday by The WELT Group, a part of the German media company Axel Springer SE, which hosted a summit which the Tesla Inc chief joined via video.
“I have not put in a bid for TikTok,” Musk said a week after US President Donald Trump said he was open to Musk buying the ByteDance-owned app if he wanted to do so.
Photo: Reuters
“I don’t have any plans for what I would do if I had TikTok,” Musk said, adding that he does not use the short video app personally and was not familiar with the app’s format.
“I’m not chomping at the bit to acquire TikTok, I do not acquire companies in general, it’s quite rare,” Musk said, adding that his billion-dollar acquisition of social media platform Twitter, now called X, was unusual.
“I usually build companies from scratch,” Musk said.
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 Jan. 19.
ByteDance was given the January deadline to sell the US assets of TikTok or face a US ban, following US lawmakers’ concerns that the app poses national security risks, because China could compel the company to share the data of its US users.
TikTok has denied that it has or ever would share US user data.
Apple Inc and Google have not reinstated TikTok to their app stores since a US law took effect.
TikTok on Friday said that it was allowing US Android users to download and connect to the app through package kits on its Web site to circumvent restrictions on the popular platform in the country.
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. It has about 170 million US users.
Last week, the US president signed an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund within the year, saying it could potentially buy TikTok.
ByteDance has previously denied any plans to sell TikTok.
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