Washington: The president of the United States, Donald Trump, told journalists on Monday that Microsoft is in conversations to acquire Tiktok and would like to see a war of offers about the application.
Tiktok, which has around 170 million US users, was briefly disconnected just before a law that required its Chinese owner will be sold for national security reasons or in front of a prohibition on January 19. Trump, after assuming the position on January 20, signed an executive order that seeks to delay the application of the law in 75 days.
Trump said last week that he was in conversations with several people for buying Tiktok and that he would probably have a decision about the future of the popular application in 30 days. The president of the United States said previously that he was open to billionaire Elon Musk buying the application of social networks if the CEO of Tesla wanted to do so. Musk, however, has not publicly commented on Trump’s offer.
More recently, the AI AI AI on Sunday made a proposal to merge with Tiktok, with the United States government obtaining half the new company in the future, a source said on Sunday. The informed conversations mark the second time Microsoft has been in the frame to acquire Tiktok.
During his first mandate, Trump ordered Tiktok to separate his American version of Bytedance citing national security concerns. Microsoft emerged as a better bidder in 2020, but the conversations soon collapsed, and Trump’s disinvestment boost ended a few months later when he left office.
Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, called that agreement as the strangest thing I have worked on. “The United States government had a” particular set of requirements and then simply disappeared, “he said in 2021.
Posted in Dawn, January 29, 2025
