U.S.
Trump says Microsoft is in contention to buy TikTok
By
The Washington Post January 28, 2025
Cat Zakrzewski, Drew Harwell and Rachel Pannett
The Washington Post January 28, 2025
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Donald Trump said Monday night that Microsoft was in contention to buy TikTok, having previously said that he is eager to forge a deal that would “save” the popular video app from a ban.
Such a deal, if realized, would put the video app used by millions of Americans under the control of the country’s second-most-valuable tech company, which has been aggressively pushing into new lines of business including artificial intelligence and gaming. Representatives for Microsoft declined to comment on Monday.
When asked aboard Air Force One whether Microsoft was involved in discussions for acquiring TikTok, Trump said: “I would say yes. A lot of interest in TikTok.”
Microsoft previously discussed buying TikTok in 2020, when Trump tried to force a sale of the app during his first term. That proposal crumbled when Trump’s push to force the app’s sale or ban was rejected by the courts.
Worth more than $3 trillion, Microsoft has an enormous budget and is likely to face fewer antitrust concerns than other tech giants such as Meta and Google, which already have social media and video businesses in Instagram and YouTube, respectively. Microsoft had focused mainly on enterprise software, though it does own the professional networking site LinkedIn.
“I like bidding wars because you make the best deal,” Trump said Monday. “So if we have a bidding war, that’s a good thing. But we have a lot of interest in it.”
The president told reporters Saturday that he was in discussions with “very substantial people” about buying TikTok and would probably make a decision in the next 30 days.
“I’d only do it if the United States benefits,” he added. “… And if we can save it, I think that would be a great thing. And I think it would be economically good for America.”
Analysts have estimated TikTok could be worth $50 billion, or far more, depending on the underlying technology for sale.
TikTok’s parent company is ByteDance, a China-based tech giant that says it is 60% owned by large institutional investors, 20% by its founder Zhang Yiming and 20% by its employees, including about 7,000 workers in the United States. ByteDance declined to comment on Tuesday local time. TikTok U.S. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A law signed last year by President Joe Biden ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok or have the app banned in the United States. That law took effect last week, though Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office calling on the Justice Department not to enforce the law for 75 days so he can “pursue a resolution” outside of a complete ban.
The law defines a qualified divestiture as precluding any “operational relationship” between the new TikTok and “any formerly affiliated entities that are controlled by a foreign adversary,” which would include ByteDance.
China has for years pledged to block any sale and, after Trump pushed for the app’s forced sale during his first term, added its central recommendation algorithm to an export-control list. Beijing argued last year that the United States has used “robbers’ logic” to justify the forced transaction.
But China last week seemed to soften its position, saying such decisions should be “determined by the companies themselves.” Some geopolitical observers have argued that TikTok could become a bargaining chip as Beijing and Washington negotiate over tariffs and trade.
Bill Ford, a ByteDance board member and the chief executive of ByteDance investor General Atlantic, said during an event in Davos, Switzerland, last week that the company may pursue solutions “short of divestiture” but that “the Chinese government, the U.S. government and the company and the board all have to be involved in this conversation.”
Trump told reporters last week he was “open” to X owner Elon Musk or Oracle founder Larry Ellison buying the company. Musk and Ellison are both prominent allies of Trump, and Oracle works as a contractor for TikTok, hosting its data on U.S. users. Microsoft donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, double what it gave Trump in 2017 and Biden in 2021.
TikTok went offline for 14 hours around the time the law took effect on Jan. 19 but returned online after Trump told TikTok’s service providers — who could face heavy fines under the law — that they would face “no liability” for helping keep TikTok from “going dark.” The app, however, remains delisted by Apple’s and Google’s app stores, preventing users from downloading or updating it. Harwell reported from Florida and Pannett from Wellington, New Zealand. Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report.
When asked aboard Air Force One whether Microsoft was involved in discussions for acquiring TikTok, Trump said: “I would say yes. A lot of interest in TikTok.” (Mike Mozart/Wikimedia Commons)