Twitter Inc. has approached TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance to express interest in acquiring the U.S. operations of the video-sharing app, two people familiar with the matter said, as experts raised doubts over Twitter's ability to put together financing for a potential deal.
It is far from certain that Twitter would be able to outbid Microsoft Corp. and complete such a transformative deal in the 45 days that U.S. President Donald Trump has given ByteDance to agree to a sale, the sources said on Saturday.
The news of Twitter and TikTok being in preliminary talks and Microsoft still being seen as the front-runner in bidding for the app's U.S. operations was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.