
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Microsoft was in talks to buy TikTok, which he said would see a bidding war for the popular app. Microsoft declined to comment on the matter regarding ongoing discussions. TikTok and parent company ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters outside of regular business hours.
TikTok had an estimated 170 million American users when, just before the January 19 law requiring ByteDance to divest the app on national security grounds, the app was to be shut down. This was followed by an executive order from Trump dated January 20 that delayed enforcement of the law by 75 days.
Last week, Trump said he was talking to “many interested buyers” in the sale of TikTok. He also promised to make a decision on its fate in less than 30 days and said he’d consider allowing Tesla chief executive Elon Musk to buy it, though Musk has not commented publicly on the idea.
Now, AI startup Perplexity AI has floated the idea of a merger with TikTok in which the US government could own as much as half of the new entity, per a person familiar with the matter cited by Reuters.
This is not Microsoft’s maiden attempt to acquire TikTok. During the first Trump term, he ordered the app, citing national security issues, to bifurcate its US operations from ByteDance. In 2020, Microsoft was the front-runner to acquire TikTok, but the deal never came to fruition, and the divestment drive cooled when Trump left office. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called the deal “the strangest thing I’ve ever worked on,” adding that the government’s unique requirements evaporated.