Microsoft Will Continue Discussions to Purchase TikTok in the United States

Microsoft has confirmed talks on the purchase of the American share of the social media platform TikTok, and declared its readiness to continue discussing a potential deal after a conversation between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and US President Donald Trump. It was reported in the company’s blog.

Chinese company ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is the second-largest non-public company by market capitalization in the world. In early July, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the possible blocking of the US application amid suspicions of its cooperation with the Chinese intelligence services.

In late July, it became known that Microsoft was negotiating the purchase of the American division of the social network TikTok, and this weekend, US President Donald Trump announced his intention to ban TikTok in the United States.

At the same time, Microsoft has announced its intention to accelerate negotiations with ByteDance to sell the US stake in TikTok and achieve results within a few weeks. The company’s deadline for the completion of the talks is September 15. Microsoft will continue its dialogue with the US authorities, including the president.

A formal notice to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), sent by Microsoft and ByteDance, became the basis for discussing a potential deal. It talks about preliminary intentions to study the possible purchase of the TikTok service in the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. If the talks are successful, Microsoft will own and operate the service in those countries. And it does not exclude the possibility of attracting other American investors to the deal.

Microsoft assured that nothing would change after the acquisition, and TikTok will continue to operate as before. But users will receive world-class security, privacy, digital protection, and operational management will be carried out with maximum transparency and under the control of government regulators of specific countries.

Microsoft also plans to ensure that American TikTok users' data is wholly stored and processed in the United States.

"To the extent that any such data is currently stored or backed-up outside the United States," Microsoft post said, "Microsoft would ensure that this data is deleted from servers outside the country after it is transferred."

In the US, TikTok has a monthly audience of 80 million.