The Chinese-owned social media Tiktok has said that it will close its services in the United States on Sunday, when the law banning Tiktok comes into force in the country.
Roni Kuronen,
Kai Jääskeläinen
22:02•Updated 23:32
The emerging US artificial intelligence company Perplexity AI has offered Tiktok’s parent company Bytedance to combine its company and Tiktok’s US operations, reports the news agency Reuters, citing a source familiar with the matter.
This was first reported by the US news channel CNBC.
According to CNBC, the purpose would be to form a new company that would include Perplexity, Tiktok’s US operations, and new venture capital firms.
A Reuters source says that the Perplexity AI company is confident of the success of its bid, as it would be a merger and not a takeover.
Perplexity AI is an artificial intelligence startup founded in 2022. The owner of Amazon, a billionaire considered to be the second richest person in the world Jeff Bezosis one of the company’s biggest financiers.
The Chinese-owned social media platform Tiktok has said it will shut down its service in the United States on Sunday unless the country’s administration changes its mind about the law banning Tiktok.
The US Supreme Court decided on Friday to uphold the law that bans Tiktok in the US. The law takes effect on Sunday.
The reason for banning Tiktok is national security. Decision-makers in the United States have been worried, among other things, by the fact that Tiktok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, collects a lot of data from its users, which could be used in Chinese state espionage operations.
Source: Reuters, STT