After years of rejecting the idea of a sale of TikTok’s US assets to an American buyer in order to avert a ban, China and ByteDance may have found an owner they could live with: Elon Musk.

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.

Content creator Jimmy Donaldson, known on the Internet as MrBeast, has made it clear he is interested in buying TikTok. Donaldson has the most subscribers of any user on YouTube— over 340 million—and boasts over 113 million TikTok followers.

Elon Musk has objected to a lack of reciprocity in the US-China tech relationship, a rare criticism from the billionaire on issues sensitive to Beijing after US president-elect Donald Trump prepared to offer a reprieve to TikTok on a ban in the US.

Other potential buyers include the philanthropist Frank Mccourt ’s Project Liberty, which is raising capital to make a bid for TikTok in order to “rearchitect the platform” and protect user data. McCourt is a billionaire who previously owned the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. The project is supported by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

Elon Musk is finally sharing his thoughts on the TikTok ban. On Saturday night, the app briefly went offline in the United States, months after the

I met with the owners of Tiktok, the big owners, it’s worthless if it doesn’t get a permit,” Trump said. “It’s worth like a trillion dollars.”

" With discussions circulating about potential deals, here’s what you need to know about the top contenders to buy and “save” TikTok in the U.S. Listed by Forbes as the world’s richest person, Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk has found his name used widely among those discussing potential TikTok buyers.