Photo Credit: Ashley King
Perplexity AI has submitted a new proposal that would allow the U.S. government to own up to 50% of a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business. The deal was submitted last week and seeks to satisfy one of Trump’s conditions for allowing a stay on TikTok’s ban.
The plan is also a revision of the previous plan submitted by the artificial intelligence company to Byte Dance on January 18. The first proposal sought to create a new structure to merge Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business, while including investments from others. ByteDance has yet to respond to the first offer, so it’s unclear whether the second proposal is seen as more favorable either way.
The new proposal would allow the U.S. government to own half of the new entity one it makes an initial public offering of at least $300 billion. The person speaking anonymous about the Perplexity deal says the second revision came about after President Trump’s comments on what a deal should look like.
Under the plan, ByteDance would not cut ties completely with TikTok. It would allow a full “U.S. board control” with ByteDance remaining a minority investor. It would also wrest control of the algorithm from the Chinese-owned tech company, which has been reticent to comply with anything exporting its AI algorithm due to Chinese law.
The proposal is similar to one put forth by Steven Mnuchin, who served as Treasury Secretary during Trump’s first term. “The technology needs to be disconnected from China,” Mnuchin said during Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures. “It needs to be disconnected from ByteDance. There’s absolutely no way that China would ever let us have something like that in China.”
A report yesterday suggested Oracle and other outside investors were in talks to take over TikTok’s global operation.
