U.S. based tech giant considers buying TikTok for as much as $100 billion

Would Microsoft pay $100 billion for TikTok?

Microsoft is reportedly looking to purchase short-form video app TikTok

Before leaving for Florida today, President Trump told reporters, "We’re looking at TikTok, we may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things. There’s a couple of options. But a lot of things are happening, so we’ll see what happens. But we are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok." In an attempt to portray itself as American through and through, TikTok hired Kevin Mayer, who was in charge of the Disney+ streaming service, as CEO. After all, what could be more American than Disney? TikTok also has offices in New York and L.A., two major U.S. cities in the entertainment industry. It also has an army of lobbyists trying to get its point through to U.S. politicians.

Some believe that any move on the part of the president to negatively impact TikTok in the U.S. is revenge for a scheme allegedly created by TikTok users to order tickets for a Trump rally that they never planned on attending thus creating a large number of empty seats in the arena making the campaign look bad. Trump himself admitted that banning TikTok in the U.S. would retaliate against the Chinese for the outbreak of COVID-19 in the states and around the world.

Microsoft has not commented on the speculation and $100 billion is a large sum of money to pay for an app, even if you are Microsoft. An all-cash deal would be out of the question and a transaction that includes Microsoft shares would be sure to raise the ire of administration officials who might complain that a large chunk of equity in one of America's great tech companies is ending up in the portfolio of a Chinese-owned company.