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San Francisco: Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions, as President Donald Trump said he was considering taking steps that would effectively ban the app from the United States.
It's unclear how advanced the talks between Microsoft and TikTok are, but any deal could help alter TikTok's ownership, said the person with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"We may be banning TikTok," President Donald Trump said on Friday,Credit:Bloomberg
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet company that is valued at $US100 billion ($140 billion). That has raised scrutiny of the app, with Trump administration officials saying they have been concerned that TikTok poses a threat to national security.
The Trump administration has been weighing whether to order ByteDance to divest from US assets it acquired in 2017, which were later merged into TikTok. Bloomberg reported on Friday that the President was poised to announce an order that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok's US operations.