Elon Musk lately mentioned he’s “not chomping on the bit to amass TikTok.”
Musk made these remarks throughout an interview on the WELT Financial Summit on January 28. A video of the interview was revealed at the moment.
The interview got here after President Donald Trump delayed a legislation requiring guardian firm ByteDance to promote TikTok or see it banned in the US. On the time, there have been studies that the Chinese language authorities was open to a deal wherein Musk (a key Trump ally) would purchase the app. Trump even informed reporters that he’d prefer to see Musk or Oracle chairman Larry Ellison purchase TikTok; he’s additionally signed an govt order to create a sovereign wealth fund that might buy a stake within the app.
However Musk claimed that he wasn’t , flatly stating, “I’ve not put in a bid for TikTok.”
“I don’t have any plans for what would I do if I had TikTok,” he mentioned within the interview. “I assume I’d take a look at the algorithm and attempt to resolve: How useful or helpful is that this algorithm? And what can we do to shift the algorithm to be extra productive and finally be useful to humanity?”
He added that he doesn’t “use TikTok personally” and is “not that aware of it.” And he described his acquisition of Twitter (now X) as an anomaly in his profession: “I often construct firms from scratch.”
Musk’s feedback on TikTok got here practically 20 minutes into the interview, which initially targeted on his plans for his Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) underneath the Trump administration. Musk and his allies have subsequently taken management of federal businesses and gained entry to giant troves of delicate information.
“With respect to authorities, actually the problem is overcoming forms,” he mentioned. “I feel forms is maybe the penultimate boss battle. The final word boss battle is defeating entropy … The second hardest battle is defeating forms. That’s how tough it’s to enhance authorities.”
