China considers selling TikTok to Musk as US sale or ban deadline approaches

As a staunch ally of Donald Trump, Elon Musk could prove essential to TikTok’s survival: he disavowed the US ban and has a history of doing business in China through his vehicle company electric, Tesla. The richest man in the world could, however, be limited by his budget: Musk is still repaying his purchase of Twitter, and TikTok would represent an additional expense estimated at between 40 and 50 billion dollars, noted Bloomberg. Another consideration for Musk is the fact that US TikTokers are already migrating to other apps, including Chinese rival Xiaohongshu, which was the most downloaded app on Apple’s US App Store on Monday, the BBC reported . Combining TikTok’s U.S. operations with Musk’s X Platform could boost the latter’s ad sales, however, and its vast content library would help bolster its AI ambitions.