President Donald Trump said Monday evening that Microsoft is among the U.S. companies looking to take control of TikTok to help the popular app avert an effective ban that could kick-in in April. “I would say yes,

President Trump said he “would say yes” to Microsoft buying TikTok but maintained that there are many interested parties that will be bidding to buy the app before a 75-day extension to decide its fate expires in April.

I would say, yes,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One when asked if the software giant was bidding to buy TikTok from its Chinese parent company ByteDance.

Considering Microsoft ends up buying TikTok, the company might be able to use the platform to boost its existing services, such as Bing Search. Bing Search is the main competitor to Google Search, and it has been rising in popularity for the last few years due to its quest to decentralize the search engine market.

Microsoft Corp. is in talks to acquire the US arm of ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, President Donald Trump said Monday night, without elaborating.

President Trump reveals Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok after the app briefly went offline amid a looming ban over data concerns.

Microsoft, which declined to comment on the president’s remarks, had discussed buying TikTok in 2020, when Trump tried to force a sale of the app in his first term.

Per The Guardian, when a reporter aboard Air Force One on Monday asked if Microsoft was in talks to buy TikTok, Trump said, "I would say yes," adding that there is "a lot of interest in TikTok. There’s great interest in TikTok." BBC News reported that Trump said he'd like to see a "bidding war" over the sale.

Texas ordered a ban on the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek on government devices days after the popular chatbot has shook investors and the tech community in recent weeks for its ability to compete with OpenAI.

Meta agreed to a $25 million settlement over a 2021 lawsuit President Donald Trump brought against Meta for suspending his accounts after the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the news, and Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the settlement to The Verge.

TikTok may be back online, but the app’s future in the United States is still far from certain. President Donald Trump’s executive order delaying enforcement of the ban was only a temporary reprieve for the company.