Photo Credit: Debbie Rowe / CC by 4.0
Elon Musk says he’s not interested in a TikTok acquisition and is not part of any current acquisition offer of the platform.
Reuters reports that Musk’s comments were made in late January at a summit in which the Tesla CEO spoke about his intentions. “I have not put in a bid for TikTok,” Musk told attendees. “I don’t have any plans for what I would do if I had TikTok,” Musk adds. He stated that he does not use the short-form video app personally and was not familiar with the format.
“I’m not chomping [sic] at the bit to acquire TikTok, I do not acquire companies in general. It is quite rare. I usually build companies from scratch,” Musk said. It’s worth noting that Musk joined the Tesla company as an investor in 2003 after its founding by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. In 2007, Musk orchestrated a boardroom coup to oust the original founders. In 2008, with Tesla facing bankruptcy amid the ongoing financial crisis, Musk contributed $80 million to the company and named himself CEO.
Musk’s companies that he founded that are still functional include SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and xAI.
Currently ByteDance is seeking to bypass restrictions on Apple and Google removing TikTok from their respective App Stores. The company recently made a version of TikTok that can be side-loaded on Android apps—where installing apps outside of the official Google Play channel is a relatively easy affair. The TikTok ban signed into law by President Biden includes a provision in which platform owners could be fined $5,000 per instance of download delivered.
President Trump has commented that he is in talks with multiple interested parties who are interested in acquiring TikTok. Trump ordered the creation of a sovereign wealth fund for the United States and commented that TikTok’s U.S. operations could become a part of that fund. Other investors including Frank McCourt, Kevin O’Leary, Steven Mnuchin, Perplexity AI and others have suggested plans to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations.
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