Reports about Chinese officials eyeing Musk as the buyer of TikTok’s U.S. operations are “not a total shock” given Musk’s relationship with Trump, says Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

China-owned ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, would prefer to keep ownership of the platform but is reportedly open to Musk acquiring it and integrating it with X, formerly known as Twitter, as part of a contingency plan, according to the Bloomberg report, which cites unnamed people familiar with the matter.

Chinese government officials are reportedly mulling selling TikTok's US operations to Elon Musk to avoid a complete ban in the country.