US President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday (27) that Microsoft is in negotiations to purchase Tiktok, and that he would like to see a bid war by the application.
The company declined to comment.
Tiktok and not immediately responded to Reuters’ requests for a comment outside regular business hours.
The application, which has about 170 million American users, was briefly taken down shortly before a law requiring its Chinese owner bytedance to sell it for national security reasons or faced a ban on January 19.
Trump, after taking office on January 20, signed an executive order seeking to delay the law in 75 days.
Trump said last week that he was in negotiations with several people about buying Tiktok and would probably have a popular in 30 days.
The US President said earlier that he was open to the case. Musk, however, did not publicly comment on Trump’s offer.
More recently, AI perplexity startup AI made a fusion proposal with Tiktok on Sunday (26), with the US government up to half the new company in the future, a source told Reuters.
Reported negotiations have marked the second time Microsoft has been in the sights to purchase Tiktok.
During his first term, Trump ordered Tiktok to separate his US version from Bytedance, citing concerns about national security.
Microsoft emerged as one of the main bidders in 2020, but negotiations soon failed, and Trump’s divestment effort ended a few months later when he left office.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called this agreement “the weirdest thing I’ve ever worked.”
The US government had a “specific set of requirements and then it simply disappeared,” he said in 2021.
