President Donald Trump said he would be open to his friends Elon Musk or Larry Ellison buying TikTok.
“Larry, let’s negotiate in front of the media,” Trump said during a press conference with Oracle co-founder Masa Son, CEO of SoftBank, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, to announce a $500 billion investment. dollars in artificial intelligence infrastructure. “What I think I would say to someone is: Buy it and give half of it to the United States of America. Half, and we’ll give you the permit. And they will have a formidable partner, the United States.”
“That sounds like a good deal to me, Mr. President,” Ellison said.
TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance still has other offers on the table, including from billionaire Frank McCourt’s Liberty Project and now, apparently, YouTube creator MrBeast – whose investor group receives legal advice from a team that includes the brother of Trump’s attorney general. take.
As he left the briefing, a reporter asked Trump if he had TikTok on his phone. “No, but I think I could put it here,” Trump replied. “I think I’ll get it now.”