Elon Musk recently said he “hasn't munched a bit to get Tiktok.”
Musk made these comments in an interview at the Welt Economic Summit on January 28th. The video of the interview was released today.
The interview comes after President Donald Trump delayed a law requiring the sale of Tiktoc ordinances to be banned in the US. At the time, there were reports that the Chinese government had accepted transactions to acquire apps by Musk (a major Trump alliance). Trump told reporters he wants to see Musk and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison win Tiktok. He also signed an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund that allows the purchase of shares in the app.
However, Musk claimed he was not interested and said, “I have never bid for Tiktok.”
“We have no plans for what to do if there was Tiktok,” he said in an interview. “I think I'm going to look at the algorithm and try to decide. How useful is this algorithm, and how useful it is? And to shift the algorithm to be more productive and ultimately beneficial to humanity. What can we do?”
He added that he “doesn't use Tiktok personally,” and that he “is not familiar with it.” He then described the acquisition of Twitter (now X) as an outrageous in his career. “I usually build a company from scratch.”
Musk's comments about Tiktok came nearly 20 minutes after the interview. This initially focused on government efficiency (DOGE) plans under the Trump administration. Musk and his allies have since managed federal agencies and have access to sensitive data.
“When it comes to government, the real challenge is overcoming bureaucracy,” he said. “I think bureaucracy is probably the penultimate boss battle. The ultimate boss battle is to defeat entropy… The second most difficult battle is to defeat bureaucracy. That's it. It's how difficult it is to improve the government.”