During his AI briefing, Donald Trump said he would consider letting Elon Musk or Larry Ellison take over TikTok. Trump made these remarks while TikTok’s fate in the U.S. remains unclear, as ByteDance must sell the app to an American company to avoid a possible ban.
Trump said he would approve if Musk wanted to buy TikTok. He said, “I’d like Larry to take it over as well.”
The US part of ByteDance is worth about $50 billion, but Trump said TikTok could reach $1 trillion in value if it gets the right permits to stay in the US. The President’s order from this week lets TikTok stay for three more months, but only if ByteDance finds an American company to work with. Trump said TikTok would be worth nothing unless it got the needed permit to operate in the U.S.
Musk and Ellison have been Trump supporters for a long time. Musk, who leads SpaceX and owns X, helped fund Trump’s political campaigns. As Oracle already hosts TikTok’s U.S. cloud services, Ellison is another Trump supporter who has helped the president.

Trump floated an unconventional proposal: Trump suggested ByteDance should buy TikTok and share half of the revenue with the US government in exchange for permits. His new plan about TikTok matches how his thinking has changed. Trump started out opposing TikTok, saying it posed a threat to national security, but his attitude changed after meeting with billionaire Jeff Yass, who has a major stake in ByteDance.
The Chinese government has not officially said anything, but they think Elon Musk could be a good buyer for ByteDance. Right now, no one knows for sure what will happen to TikTok because all the people who have a say in its future are still thinking about their choices.