Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, stated that he has no plans to acquire the video platform TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance.
According to a video released by the German daily Die Welt on the 8th (local time), Musk said, "I have never bid on TikTok," adding, "I have no plans on what I would do if I were to acquire TikTok."
Earlier, Bloomberg reported that Chinese officials are assessing the possibility of transferring TikTok's U.S. operations to Musk, a close associate of President Donald Trump. It noted that one of several scenarios includes X taking over TikTok's U.S. operations and running them together.
TikTok's services in the U.S. were temporarily suspended as ByteDance did not sell TikTok's U.S. operations by the deadline set by the 'TikTok Ban Law' on the 19th of last month. However, the possibility of a sale has arisen as President Trump issued an executive order delaying the TikTok ban for 75 days shortly after taking office.
On the 27th of last month, President Trump told reporters that Microsoft (MS) is in negotiations to acquire TikTok and expressed a desire to see a bidding competition for TikTok. He also mentioned earlier that he is open to the idea of Musk or Oracle's Chairman Larry Ellison acquiring TikTok.
Meanwhile, Musk also noted that he is competing with the artificial intelligence (AI) model developed by the Chinese startup DeepSeek. He stated, "Is it (DeepSeek) an AI revolution? No. (Those) at xAI and other companies will soon release better models than DeepSeek."