This recent proposal, which was put forward last week, is a modification of a previous offer that the AI startup had presented to ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, on January 18. Notably, this was a day before the enforcement of the legislation that banned TikTok.
The initial proposal, to which ByteDance has not yet replied, aimed to establish a new framework involving the integration of San Francisco-based Perplexity with TikTok’s US operations, along with contributions from various other investors.
TikTok briefly shut down in the US a week ago, but went back online after Trump said he would postpone the ban.
TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew was in attendance at Trump’s inauguration on January 20, along with several other tech industry leaders who have been working on fostering more amicable relationships with the new government administration.
Congress voted to ban TikTok in the U.S. out of concern that TikTok’s ownership structure represented a security risk.
The Biden administration argued in court for months that it was too much of a risk to allow a Chinese company to control the algorithm that fuels what people see on the app. Officials also raised concerns about user data collected on the platform.
However, to date, the US hasn’t provided public evidence of TikTok handing user data to Chinese authorities or allowing them to tinker with its algorithm.
