According to Bloomberg, Chinese government officials are considering selling TikTok's U.S. unit to Elon Musk's X Company if the service fails to avoid a ban. Although Beijing prefers to keep TikTok under ByteDance's ownership, some officials are already working on contingency plans, the report said.
Discussions about the sale of TikTok's US unit to Elon Musk are part of the Chinese government's efforts to cooperate with the Trump administration, including Musk.
According to Bloomberg, one of the possible scenarios being discussed by the Chinese government is the transfer of the US segment of TikTok to Musk's X (formerly Twitter) to jointly manage both platforms. TikTok, which has more than 170 million users in the United States, could significantly increase X's attractiveness to advertisers. In addition, Musk's artificial intelligence, xAI, can benefit greatly from the huge amounts of data generated by TikTok.
It is not yet known whether ByteDance is aware of the discussions with the Chinese government or whether any agreement has been reached on how to proceed. There is also no confirmation whether Elon Musk is actively negotiating with TikTok and ByteDance on a possible deal.
In April 2024, Musk stated on the X platform that he believed TikTok should continue to operate in the United States, although he acknowledged that the platform's ban could ultimately benefit X.
As a reminder, the social network's parent company, ByteDance, has until January 19, 2025 , to sell its stake in the US division of TikTok, otherwise the app may become unavailable in the US.