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.

A representative for TikTok has denied a report claiming that China was working on selling the app to Elon Musk to keep it operational in the United States. On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Chinese officials were “evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok” and that the Chinese government had discussed the option of Musk’s social media app X taking “control of TikTok US” and running

The world’s richest person Elon Musk would likely be looking at a price tag similar to what he paid for Twitter if a deal materializes to buy the American operations of TikTok, according to one well-known analyst covering Musk--as China reportedly mulls allowing a sale to Musk to prevent an all-out U.