After years of rejecting the idea of a sale of TikTok’s US assets to an American buyer in order to avert a ban, China and ByteDance may have found an owner they could live with: Elon Musk.

Elon Musk has objected to a lack of reciprocity in the US-China tech relationship, a rare criticism from the billionaire on issues sensitive to Beijing after US president-elect Donald Trump prepared to offer a reprieve to TikTok on a ban in the US.

Musk acquired X (then Twitter) in October 2022 after a highly publicized back and forth, in which he gave up on the acquisition midway but ultimately closed the deal, paying $44 billion for the platform. X's user base has been on a decline since the acquisition, and advertising revenues have plummeted.

Elon Musk is finally sharing his thoughts on the TikTok ban. On Saturday night, the app briefly went offline in the United States, months after the

"I have been against a TikTok ban for a long time, because it goes against freedom of speech. That said, the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would be supportive of the world's richest man and his close aide, Elon Musk, buying TikTok "if he wanted to". Trump was asked if he would be open to the billionaire founder of Tesla buying the short-video platform facing a nationwide ban in the US after the Supreme Court last week upheld a law requiring TikTok to sever ties with its Chinese parent ByteDance.

In order to avoid a potential ban in the United States, Chinese officials are considering a contingency plan that would involve selling TikTok's US operations to Elon Musk, said a Bloomberg report. The report further said that the first preference of the Chinese officials will be to keep the short-form video hosting platform under the control of parent company ByteDance,

The new US President is open to the Tesla billionaire purchasing social media app TikTok but he's not the only potential buyer