Elon Musk has stated that he is not interested in purchasing TikTok, the popular short-video app that the United States has been attempting to ban due to national security concerns with its Chinese owner, ByteDance.
Musk's comments, made in late January, were published online Saturday by The WELT Group, part of German media company Axel Springer SE, which hosted a summit where the Tesla chief joined the conference via video.
“I have not made an offer for TikTok,” Musk said a week after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was open to Musk buying the app if he wanted to.
“I have no plan as to what I would do if I had TikTok,” Musk said, adding that he does not personally use the short-video app and is unfamiliar with the app’s format.
“I’m not eager to acquire TikTok, I don’t acquire companies in general, it’s quite unusual,” Musk said, adding that his multibillion-dollar acquisition of social media platform Twitter, now called X, was unusual.
“I usually build companies from scratch,” Musk said.
The Republican president signed a decree to delay the implementation of the TikTok ban, which was scheduled to be closed on January 19.
ByteDance had until January to sell the app’s U.S. assets or face a U.S. ban, following concerns from lawmakers that TikTok poses national security risks because China could force the company to share data from its U.S. users. TikTok has denied that it has shared or will share data from U.S. users.
Apple and Google have not re-listed TikTok in their app stores since the U.S. law came into effect. TikTok said Friday that it was allowing U.S. Android users to download and connect to the app through package kits on its website, in an effort to circumvent the restrictions imposed on the popular platform in the country.
Trump has said he was in talks with several people about buying TikTok and that he would likely make a decision on the app’s future this month.