Twitter Is Now Reportedly Looking to Acquire TikTok
Trump insists on the September 15 deadline for the video sharing app.
Early last week, Donald Trump issued an executive order banning ByteDance‘s massively popular app TikTok, deeming it a national security threat due to its Chinese ownership. At the same time, Trump set a deadline for the acquisition of the company if it wishes to continue operating in the U.S., which will expire on September 15.
In light of this, Twitter has now joined Microsoft on the list of potential buyers, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. The social media platform has already commenced preliminary talks with TikTok on a possible acquisition, although it also notes the unlikelihood of Twitter being able to secure a deal, citing its much smaller $29 billion USD market capitalization compared to Microsoft’s $1.6 trillion USD, while TikTok is also in the tens of billions.
The news comes just a day after another source revealed to NPR that TikTok may be looking at filing a lawsuit against Trump’s administration to contest the executive order. The Chinese-owned company believes that the executive order was issued “without any due process” with “no substantiation” of its allegations relating to security issues, and that the decision was unconstitutional.
Stay tuned as the story develops.
Elsewhere in tech, Toshiba has left the PC industry after 35 years.
