Microsoft’s Value Jumped By $77 Billion After Announcing Plans To Potentially Buy TikTok

The Xbox company’s total valuation jumped significantly on the news that it might acquire the viral app.

Technology giant Microsoft recently confirmed that it was speaking with TikTok about a potential purchase of the viral app’s operations in the US and other countries, and this led to a significant surge in the company’s stock price and total value.

Business Insider noticed that Microsoft’s stock price rose by more than 5 percent following the news, and this works out to an increase of around $77 billion to Microsoft’s total market value. The company is now worth more than $1.6 trillion.

Microsoft plans to complete its acquisition discussions with TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, by September 15. Social media platform Twitter is also reportedly interested in purchasing TikTok’s US operations. Apple, Google, and Facebook have also supposedly expressed some level of interest in buying TikTok. For what it’s worth, Facebook’s Instagram app just added a new feature called “Reels” that borrows the basic idea of TikTok.

CNBC reported that Microsoft might end up paying between $10 billion and $30 billion to acquire TikTok’s US operations, depending on how the deal shakes out and how much of the company Microsoft might take on. That would make it one of Microsoft’s biggest acquisition in its history based on purchase price. For comparison, Microsoft paid $26.2 billion to buy LinkedIn, while the company forked out $8.5 billion to buy Skype, and $2.5 billion to buy Minecraft and developer Mojang.

US President Donald Trump has called out TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, which is based in China. The president has suggested he may try to ban TikTok in the US unless an American company buys its US operations by September 15.

Microsoft shut down streaming site Mixer last month as it continues to focus on its enterprise-related businesses. It’s unclear how or if a TikTok acquisition might factor into the Xbox business as the Xbox Series X’s release approaches. It could be as simple as Xbox ads appearing in the app or deeper integration for sharing videos, but at this point, it’s merely guesswork.