TikTok has described a report it could sell its threatened US business to Elon Musk as “pure fiction”.
The short video platform’s Chinese owners ByteDance are facing the prospect of TikTok being shut down permanently in America on Sunday.
That is when a US government ban, on national security grounds, is due to take effect.
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But Bloomberg News reported that officials in Beijing, where TikTok’s parent firm is based, were considering whether to allow a possible sale to the billionaire X owner, if the order could not be overturned or delayed.
The authorities in China were said to prefer that TikTok’s US business remained under ByteDance’s control.
They have always denied having an influence over ByteDance let alone TikTok – a position that both entities have supported, consistently denying any suggestion of collusion that would represent any kind of threat to US interests.
The US Supreme Court has indicated that it is minded to accept the Biden administration’s ban on the grounds that national security concerns outweigh the rights of TikTok’s 170 million US users to free speech.
It is not clear when the final ruling will be delivered but the ban is due to take effect on Sunday, a day before Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Ahead of the start of his second term in the White House, he has called for the court to push back the deadline to allow for a “political resolution”.
Such a move would not rule out Musk, a political ally, from potentially snapping up TikTok if the impasse can not be broken.
A TikTok spokesperson said in response to the report of talks: “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction.”
Other potential buyers are said to include Mr Trump’s former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt.
