Elon Musk to buy TikTok ? After Twitter, the billionaire is in talks to acquire the social network

Chinese authorities are weighing the possibility of Elon Musk acquiring TikTok's U.S. operations if the popular platform is banned in the United States by the end of the week, Bloomberg reported Monday.

The United States passed a law last year that requires Chinese entertainment giant ByteDance to sell TikTok by January 19, 2025, or face a ban in the country where the app has 170 million users.

The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which heard arguments from both sides on Friday: Washington says it wants to prevent the risks of espionage and manipulation by Beijing, while the social network and associations accuse the law of stifling freedom of expression.

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A clear majority of the judges were willing to authorize the ban. The Chinese government and ByteDance have always openly opposed a sale of the U.S. portion of TikTok.

Twitter's $44 billion acquisition

But “senior Chinese officials had already begun discussing contingency plans for TikTok as part of a broader discussion about how to work with the Trump administration, one of which involves Musk,”, sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.

Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, had surprised everyone by announcing his intention to buy Twitter in early 2022. After months of twists and turns and attacks on the platform, he ended up acquiring it for $44 billion.

The richest man in the world then renamed it X and used it extensively to support Donald Trump, in addition to his large financial contributions to the Republican.

“According to a scenario envisaged by the Chinese government, X would take control of the American TikTok and manage the two companies together“, specifies Bloomberg. The article notes, however, that the deliberations are “preliminary“.

Donald Trump, who will be president of the United States again in a week, had tried to ban TikTok at the end of his first term in 2020, also in the name of national security.

He has since reversed his position, claiming to have a “weak” for the app and its young audience. In addition to electric cars and rockets, Elon Musk has co-founded other companies, including xAI, the most recent, which specializes in generative artificial intelligence (AI), which requires mountains of fresh data: social networks are ideal for feeding AI models.

The entrepreneur has also gained political responsibilities. Donald Trump asked him to lead an external consulting mission to make massive savings in federal budgets.