Washington: Billionaire Elon Musk confirmed that he did not intend to buy Tiktok, the popular application to short-video at the center of a debate on American national security because of his Chinese property under Bytedance.
Musk’s comments, made at the end of January, were published online on Saturday by Welt Group, part of the German media company Axel Springer SE, which welcomed a summit where Tesla chief joined the conference by video.
“I did not make an offer for Tiktok,” said Musk a week after US President Donald Trump said he was open to Musk to buy the application belonging to Bytedance if he wanted to do it.
“I have no plan for what I would do if I had Tiktok,” said Musk, adding that he does not personally use the video application and did not know the format of the application.
“I am not repercussions on the bit to acquire Tiktok, I do not acquire companies in general, it is quite rare,” said Musk, adding that his acquisition of a billion dollars in the Twitter social media platform, now called X, was unusual.
“I generally build companies from scratch,” said Musk.
The Republican President signed an executive decree aimed at delaying the application of a short video application ban which was to be closed on January 19.
Bytedance received the deadline for January to sell the American assets of Tiktok or to face an American ban, following the concerns of the legislators that the application presents national security risks because China could force the company to share data from its American users. Tiktok has denied that he has or ever sharing American user data.
Apple and Google did not restore Tiktok in their application stores, because an American law has entered into force. Tiktok said on Friday that it allowed Android users to download and connect to the application via package kits on its website, in order to bypass restrictions on the country’s popular platform.
Trump said he was in talks with several people on the purchase of Tiktok and would probably have a decision on the future of the application this month. It has around 170 million American users.
This week, the president signed a decree to create a sovereign fund during the year, saying that he could potentially buy Tiktok.
Bytedance previously denied the plans to sell Tiktok.
Trump Saving Tiktok represents a position reversal of his first mandate when he was without success to prohibit the application for the concerns that the company shared the personal information of the Americans with the Chinese government.
More recently, Trump said that he had “a warm place in my heart for Tiktok”, creating the application to help him win young voters in the 2024 presidential election.
Bytedance and Tiktok did not immediately respond to a request for comments outside regular work hours.
