At the end of last week, President Donald Trump said he was hoping to decide on the further fate of the Tiktok application in the United States for thirty days, and now he expresses the hope that there will be a lot of people who want to buy the American business of the Chinese social network. Microsoft is one of the candidates, and the Perplexity AI startup offers the US authorities to gain control of Tiktok through their merger with the American Tiktok assets.
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According to CNBC, the calculation of the Perplexity AI startup based on merging with the American business Tiktok is built on the conviction that the Chinese ByTedance is opposed to the idea of its sale as such, and another form of transaction may not find such resistance from the Chinese side. The Perplexity proposal implies the creation of NewCo, the shares of which in proportional quantities will go to existing Tiktok shareholders and Perplexity itself. Some new investors selected by both parties will be given money to the deal.
In the future, it is understood that NEWCO will enter an IPO with a capitalization level of about $ 300 billion, and the American authorities will receive half of the shares of this holding. Thus, the goal of Tiktok’s transition pursued by the latter will be achieved under their control regarding the American business of this social network. The transaction does not imply the transfer of Tiktok’s key recommendation algorithm to American investors, on which the success of the social network is built.
According to Reuters, Donald Trump began this week with the statement that Microsoft was participating in negotiations about the possibility of buying American assets Tiktok. The US President literally admitted that he would like to observe the “war” of potential investors for the right to buy Tiktok. Even during the last presidential period, Trump insisted on the Tiktok Branch Branch to transfer it to the consortium of American companies, and one of them was already Microsoft. True, the leadership of the latter subsequently called those negotiations rather strange, but in the new conditions the corporation could have relevant motives for participation in negotiations.