Ammon News - TikTok denied a report that China is looking at potentially facilitating a sale of the app to tech billionaire Elon Musk to keep TikTok operational in America amid a looming U.S. government ban.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that “Chinese officials are evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok” if an American law goes into effect that would require parent company ByteDance to divest its TikTok stake or effectively ban the app in the U.S. The Bloomberg report cited anonymous sources.

“We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction,” a TikTok rep said in reply to Variety‘s request for comment.

Musk has not commented on Bloomberg’s TikTok report. Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and is the world’s wealthiest individual, bought Twitter in 2022 in a $44 billion deal and subsequently renamed it X. Under “one scenario” that has been discussed by the Chinese government, X would “take control of TikTok US and run the businesses together,” according to the Bloomberg report. The news outlet noted that it is “unclear whether Musk, TikTok and ByteDance have held any talks about the terms of any possible deal.”