Now that President Donald Trump has given TikTok a temporary reprieve, the big question is: Who is going to buy it?
Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order instructing the Justice Department not to enforce a law passed last year banning the app unless ByteDance, the China-based company that owns the app, sells it to an American entity.
Trump’s move followed a Supreme Court ruling upholding the ban, citing arguments over national security concerns. Proponents of the law argued that ByteDance would be compelled to share Americans’ data with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the CCP was using the app to spread anti-American propaganda.
The legislation requires ByteDance to either sell TikTok to a company that is not affiliated with the Chinese regime or to stop offering the app in the United States.
There are several entities that might be interested in purchasing the app, which is believed to be worth over $200 billion, according to multiple reports.
Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is reportedly assembling an investor group to purchase TikTok. During an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” he indicated he agreed with the ban because “There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China.”
From The New York Times:
It is unclear how advanced Mr. Mnuchin’s discussions with investors are, and whether the participants have taken the formal steps necessary to pursue a possible transaction, like hiring a financial adviser or making a formal approach to ByteDance. A spokesman for Mr. Mnuchin declined to comment.
Mr. Mnuchin has a long history with TikTok. As Treasury secretary from February 2017 to January 2021, he led the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a group of federal agencies that vets international involvement in American companies. CFIUS was behind the government’s push to get ByteDance to sell its TikTok business in 2020.
6. Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC in March 2024 that he planned to “put together a group” to buy TikTok, later telling Bloomberg in May that he had reached out to “a lot of tech companies” about purchasing the app. pic.twitter.com/EAH50Fmxwq
— Gina Acosta (@ginacostag_) January 17, 2025
Billionaire Kevin O’Leary, a regular on the television show “Shark Tank,” is reportedly putting together a syndicate bid to purchase the app at between $20 billion and $30 billion, far less than what TikTok has been valued. He told CNBC that the deal would not include TikTok’s preference-based algorithms, but indicated the app is “the largest entertainment and business network in America as it stands today, so its of great interest and great value.”
O’Leary suggested that without the algorithm, the eventual buyer would be buying “the valuable domestic brand TikTok and 170 million users, with no data,” which would mean they would have to recreate the algorithms using U.S. code.
O’Leary on offer to buy TikTok: We don’t want to buy the algorithm… We’ll buy it without the algorithm… We’re going to rebuild the product and make it much better actually pic.twitter.com/ak38WkGo6A
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 13, 2025
Bobby Kotcik, former CEO of video game company Activision, has also expressed interest in purchasing TikTok, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Already, U.S. tech and media titans are circling. In recent days, some executives have discussed buying TikTok if ByteDance agrees to sell. Bobby Kotick, the former chief executive of videogame publisher Activision, has expressed interest to ByteDance co-founder Zhang Yiming, according to a person familiar with the situation. Any price tag is estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Kotick is looking for partners. At a dinner at an Allen & Co. conference earlier this week, Kotick floated the idea of partnering to buy TikTok to a table of people that included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, according to people familiar with the situation. OpenAI could use TikTok to help train its AI models if a partner such as Kotick could raise the capital for such an acquisition.
YouTube sensation Mr. Beast is also eyeing a purchase of the app. As the internet’s highest-earning content creator, he is in discussions with several groups that could be interested in purchasing TikTok, Bloomberg reported.
A spokesperson for Mr. Beast explained that “Several interested buyers are having ongoing discussions with [Mr. Beast], but he has no exclusive agreements with any of them.”
Even Rumble is getting in on the action. CEO Chris Pavlovski issued a statement to TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, explaining that the video-sharing platform “is ready to join a consortium with other parties seeking to acquire and operate TikTok inside the United States” and “serve as a cloud technology partner.”
An offer for TikTok from our CEO @chrispavlovski pic.twitter.com/lIeZ6IXANU
— Rumble 🏴☠️ (@rumblevideo) March 12, 2024
Since Trump bought ByteDance some time by delaying enforcement of the law for 75 days, it is likely other potential buyers will come out of the woodwork to make their bid to purchase the app. The question is: Who will win this bidding war?
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