Who would buy TikTok? Here are some of the potential buyers

TikTok is facing a possible ban in the United States if parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell the social media platform. Making that happen might be easier said that done, though.

The House of Representatives, on Wednesday, passed a bill mandating the sale of the app within six months. If ByteDance refuses, then TikTok would be removed from app stores and U.S. servers. The legislation faces a less certain road in the Senate, but President Joe Biden has said he will sign the bill if Congress passes it.

ByteDance, for its part, 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 launch a legal battle if the bill becomes law.

“We will not stop fighting and advocating for you,” Chew said in the video. “We will continue to do all we can, including exercising our legal rights to protect this amazing platform that we have built with you.”

Even if the company reversed that stance, it’s unlikely China would approve the move, as it would mean giving up a valuable tech asset—the algorithm that keeps users hooked. But that’s not stopping groups from declaring their interest in purchasing TikTok—nor preventing speculation from running amok.

“There are plenty of folks who are very interested in buying TikTok who are not 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 America owned,” said Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian on Instagram.

So who has declared interest in (or been mentioned as a possible contender for) becoming the new owner of TikTok? Here’s where things stand now.

Steven Mnuchin

Mnuchin, who served as Treasury Secretary in the Trump administration, announced on CNBC Thursday morning that he was putting together an investor group to try to purchase TikTok. He did not, however, discuss the investors who would be joining him in this quest.

“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 put together a group to buy TikTok. . . . This should be owned by U.S. businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China.”

Mnuchin is currently head of Liberty Strategic Capital, which was the lead investor last week in a $1 billion capital infusion meant to stabilize New York Community Bancorp.

Bobby Kotick

Kotick has some time on his hands, now that the sale of Activision-Blizzard to Microsoft is complete. 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 walked out with.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported Kotick had expressed interest in buying TikTok to ByteDance cofounder Zhang Yiming. He has spoken with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others to help finance the deal, according to the Journal. It’s unclear how those overtures have been met.

Kevin O’Leary

The bombastic Shark Tank star, who calls himself Mr. Wonderful, made waves on Fox News this week by declaring TikTok is “not going to get banned because I’m going to buy it.” Anything’s possible, but O’Leary is an unlikely candidate who loves the media spotlight. He says he would appoint an American CEO and board and move the app’s servers to the U.S., as well as rewrite the code “to shut out the Chinese backdoors.”

Microsoft

With a market cap of over $3 trillion, Microsoft certainly has the finances to purchase TikTok. And in 2021, it came close to doing so, before the deal fell apart. (CEO Satya Nadella called the near-acquisition the “strangest thing I’ve ever worked on.”) Microsoft doesn’t have a social media platform, but that likely wouldn’t prevent the government from taking a close look at any potential deal on antitrust concerns. And Microsoft, which, to be clear, has not expressed any interest in TikTok since this bill was introduced, already has enough headaches with the feds over its relationship with OpenAI.

Oracle/Walmart

In 2020, TikTok ultimately 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 shelved the matter indefinitely to review the app’s national security threat level. Under that deal, ByteDance would have retained an 80% ownership stake in TikTok. Neither Oracle nor Walmart has expressed any interest in reviving that deal to date.

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 a wild hair and made a bid that was accepted—and he didn’t later change his mind—the government would likely have something to say about him owning two leading social media sites.

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