During a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, President Donald Trump floated the idea of Elon Musk or Larry Ellison purchasing TikTok, while also proposing that the U.S. government take a significant share of the transaction.
Yesterday, on the day of his inauguration as the 47th President, Trump signed an executive order to pause the ban of TikTok for 75 days.
When asked by a reporter if he would support Musk buying TikTok, Trump responded, “I would be if he wanted to buy it.” He also expressed interest in Oracle founder Larry Ellison stepping in, saying, “I’d like Larry to buy it, too.” Shortly afterwards, Trump added, “Larry, let’s negotiate in front of the media.”
Ellison, who co-founded Oracle and is also a billionaire (and friends with Elon), was in attendance as part of The Stargate Project, a new venture led by SoftBank (CEO Masayoshi Son was there too) and OpenAI, which plans to invest $500 billion US over the next four years to develop AI infrastructure in the U.S., starting with an initial $100 billion.
Key partners include Oracle (hence why Ellison was there), NVIDIA, Microsoft, and MGX, with SoftBank overseeing financial aspects and OpenAI handling operations.
Trump outlined a proposal, stating that TikTok’s value hinges on U.S. approval. “It’s worthless if it doesn’t get a permit,” he said. “With a permit, it’s worth like a trillion dollars.” He suggested that if someone were to buy TikTok, the U.S. should receive half of the deal in exchange for granting the necessary permit.
“They’ll have a great partner—the United States,” Trump explained. “And the United States will make it very worthwhile for them in terms of the permits and everything else.”
“What do you think?”, said Trump to Ellison after explaining the offer. “Selling a good deal to me, Mr. President,” replied Ellison, to laughter by the media.
Others who want to buy TikTok include YouTube giant Mr. Beast and a group of U.S. investors, while Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary also previously said he’d be open to buying the social network for $20 billion.
Last week, when rumours of Musk wanting to buy TikTok surfaced, the social network shut them down, calling the idea “pure fiction”. Maybe that wasn’t fiction after all? X still has Vine, the popular video app that started our addiction to short-form video. Musk said he was “looking into” bringing back Vine.
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