Elon Musk is giving TikTok a hard pass.
The X (ex-Twitter) boss dropped this bombshell at an Axel Springer SE media summit last month, but WELT Group just released the footage today (Feb. 8).
“I have not put in a bid for TikTok,” he stated flatly. “I don’t have any plans for what I would do if I had TikTok.”
The tech mogul then admitted he’s clueless about the platform and isn’t even a user. “I’m not chomping at the bit to acquire TikTok, I do not acquire companies in general, it’s quite rare,” he said. “I usually build companies from scratch.”
TikTok hit a rough patch in January, getting temporarily booted from the US before President Trump stepped in, giving parent company Bytedance more time to find an American buyer.
With Musk out of the picture, MrBeast might be the next potential buyer. After joking about buying TikTok on X, he revealed he’s actually been chatting with several billionaires about a group purchase.
It kicked off when MrBeast tweeted, “Okay, fine, I’ll buy TikTok so it doesn’t get banned.” The next day, he followed up with, “Unironically I’ve had so many billionaires reach out to me since I tweeted this, let’s see if we can pull this off.”
Later on TikTok, MrBeast got serious about his plans. “Just got out of a meeting with a bunch of billionaires. TikTok, we mean business,” he announced. “This is my lawyer right here, we have an offer ready for you. We wanna buy the platform, America deserves TikTok! Give me a seat at the table, let me save this platform, TikTok!”
But here’s the catch – TikTok’s worth about $300 billion, way more than MrBeast’s $500 million net worth.
Uncle Sam might even jump into the ring. Last week, President Trump started setting up a US sovereign wealth fund and hinted at buying TikTok through it.
“We’re going to be doing something, perhaps with TikTok, and perhaps not,” Trump said. “If we make the right deal, we’ll do it. Otherwise, we won’t… we might put that in the sovereign wealth fund.”
