Who’s serious about buying TikTok?
Billionaire businessman and real estate mogul Frank McCourt and his internet advocacy group recently announced it had submitted a proposal to buy the social media site from ByteDance. Famed Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary has also joined the effort.
The group has not disclosed details of the bid.
If a sale occurs, McCourt, a former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, said he would plan to restructure TikTok and give more agency to people “over their digital identities and data” by migrating the platform to an open-source protocol that allows for more transparency.
Former US Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin has also taken steps to purchase TikTok.
Shortly after Congress passed the ban, Mnuchin told CNBC he had started creating an investor group that would purchase the popular social media company. He offered no details about who may be in the group or about TikTok’s possible valuation.
Former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt is part of a group trying to buy the American arm of TikTok.Credit: WireImage
When Mnuchin was Treasury secretary, he helped the Trump administration broker a deal in 2020 that would have had US corporations Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in TikTok on national security grounds.
Several other names have been floated as possible buyers — Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast), who recently posted on social media about possibly pulling off such a deal, and former Blizzard-Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. Whether these buyers are serious and actively assembling a bid for the company, however, is not clear.
What is next?
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Trump’s authority to hit pause on a law that passed by wide margins in Congress, the US Supreme Court, that was unanimously upheld on Friday and which took effect on Sunday is uncertain. Trump has credited TikTok with helping him win the support of more young voters in last year’s election.
Only the sitting president can issue a 90-day stay on the ban and only then if a buyer has taken concrete steps toward a purchase.
AP
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