Chinese officials are considering selling the US operations of TikTok to Elon Musk, Bloomberg has reported.
The deal would see TikTok’s US operations being controlled by X.
Bloomberg notes the 170 million American users of TikTok could provide valuable data to Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI.
TikTok’s US operations are valued at an estimated $65 billion to $80 billion.
Musk has an estimated net worth of $672 billion, but nearly all of that wealth is tied up in other ventures like Tesla, Starlink and SpaceX.
Since Bloomberg’s report, TikTok has denied the reports.
“We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction,” a representative told Variety.
The South African-born tech mogul bought Twitter for $71 billion in 2022.
Since then, millions of users and many major advertisers have left the platform and the workforce at the company was halved.
Bloomberg reported a purchase of TikTok would make …