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TikTok faces a potential ban in the US if parent company ByteDance does not sell the social media platform. However, achieving this may be easier.
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives approved a draft law requiring the sale of the application within six months. If ByteDance declines, TikTok will be removed from US app stores and servers. The legislation faces a less certain path in the Senate, but President Joe Biden has said he will sign the bill if it passes Congress.
For its part, ByteDance has shown no interest in divesting itself of its crown jewel, and CEO Shou Zi Chew, in a video message to users, posted on X/Twitter, vowed to wage a legal battle if the bill becomes law.
“We will not stop fighting and defending you,” Chiu He said in the video. “We will continue to do everything we can, including exercising our legal rights, to protect this amazing platform we have built with you.”
Even if the company reverses this position, China is unlikely to agree to the move, because it would mean giving up valuable technology assets, which is the algorithm that keeps users addicted to it. But that doesn’t stop groups from declaring their interest in buying TikTok, nor does it stop speculation from running amok.
“There are a lot of people who are very interested in buying TikTok who aren’t already part of the social media tech elite who would be great candidates, and I hope that’s the outcome we get because it should be owned by America,” Reddit co-founder Alexis said. Ohanian on Instagram.
So who has declared interest (or been mentioned as a potential contender) to become the new owner of TikTok? This is where things stand now.
Steven Mnuchin
Mnuchin, who served as Treasury secretary in the Trump administration, announced on CNBC Thursday morning that he was assembling an investor group to try to buy TikTok. But he did not discuss the investors who would join him in this endeavor.
“I think the legislation should pass, and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin said. “It’s a great business and I’m going to form a group to buy TikTok. . . . It should be owned by American companies. There’s no way the Chinese would ever allow an American company to own something like this in China.”
Mnuchin currently serves as president of Liberty Strategic Capital, which was the lead investor last week in a $1 billion capital infusion aimed at stabilizing New York Community Bancorp.
Bobby Kotick
Kotick has some time on his hands, now that the Activision-Blizzard sale to Microsoft has been completed. He left the gaming giant at the end of last year, with hundreds of millions of dollars in his pocket, thanks to his ownership position in the video game giant and any compensation deals he pulled out of.
Earlier this week, Wall Street Journal It was reported that Kotick expressed interest in purchasing TikTok to ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming. He has spoken with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others to help fund the deal, according to The Verge. magazine. It is unclear how these initiatives were met.
Kevin O’Leary
Flowery Shark tank The star, who calls himself Mr. Terrific, caused a stir on Fox News this week by declaring that TikTok “will not be banned because I will buy it.” Anything is possible, but O’Leary is an unlikely candidate who loves the media spotlight. He says he will appoint an American CEO and board and move the app’s servers to the United States, as well as rewrite the code to “close Chinese backdoors.”
Microsoft
With a market capitalization of over $3 trillion, Microsoft certainly has the financial resources to buy TikTok. In 2021, it came close to doing so, before the deal fell apart. (CEO Satya Nadella called the impending acquisition “the strangest thing I’ve ever worked on.”) Microsoft doesn’t have a social media platform, but that likely won’t stop the government from taking a closer look at any potential deal. On antitrust concerns. And Microsoft that To be clearhas not expressed any interest in TikTok since this bill was introduced, and already has enough headaches with the feds over its relationship with OpenAI.
Oracle/Walmart
In 2020, TikTok eventually agreed to be sold to a group that included Oracle and Walmart, but that deal fell by the wayside after ByteDance won its legal challenge to the forced sale of the division, and the Biden administration postponed the matter indefinitely to review the app’s national security threat level. Under this deal, ByteDance would have retained an 80% ownership stake in TikTok. Neither Oracle nor Walmart have expressed any interest in reviving this deal yet.
Elon Musk
Musk has plenty to keep him busy right now, but after his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022, you can’t rule anything out. But even if he got his hair wild and made an offer that was accepted – and didn’t later change his mind – the government would likely have something to say about his having two leading social media sites.
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