Ultrawealthy Investors Are Vying To Buy Tiktok — here's What Some Would Do If They Took Over The Mega-app

The US Appeals Court upheld a decision forcing the sale of TikTok from its China-based parent company, ByteDance, lest the short-form video platform be banned in the US.

Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

• A US TikTok ban is set to take effect within days unless the Supreme Court blocks it.
• Investors, philanthropists, and tech giants have expressed interest in buying the company.
• Here's what they've said they'd do with the short-form video platform if they bought it.

TikTok is set to be banned in the US next week unless the Supreme Court steps in to block it.

On January 10 the court heard oral arguments over a law that will ban TikTok from app stores in the US unless ByteDance, TikTok's China-based parent company, sells its US operations to a non-Chinese owner by January 19.

A Supreme Court decision is expected any day. Legal experts previously told Business Insider the court seemed poised to uphold the law.

TikTok has said the ban was "conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed, and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people."

"The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025," the company previously said in a statement.

With the app's US future up in the air, a slate of ultrawealthy investors has expressed interest in buying the social media platform.

Big-name buyers, from Kevin O'Leary of "Shark Tank" to former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, have said for months that they are prepared to step in if ByteDance changes its mind or the Supreme Court decides the ban can proceed.

YouTuber MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, said this week he was also interested in buying TikTok, though it's unclear how serious his interest is.

Here's what those who've said publicly that they want to buy TikTok would do with the platform if they acquired the app.

Representatives for TikTok did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Kevin O'Leary

In March, the "Shark Tank" mogul told CNBC he wanted to assemble a syndicate of investors to purchase the platform for about $20 to $30 billion — a fraction of its $220 billion valuation in its last funding round.

"It's the largest entertainment and business network in America as it stands today, so it's of great interest and great value," he told the outlet.

However, O'Leary said a sale likely wouldn't include TikTok's signature algorithms, so he or another purchaser would have to "re-emulate" the app's algorithms and act as a "steward" to transform the platform from "TikTok China to TikTok U.S.A."

It's unclear exactly how O'Leary might change TikTok's algorithms; however, similar short-form video services exist elsewhere on social media with their own proprietary algorithms, and he said a new version could be created under the existing TikTok brand.

Representatives for O'Leary did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Earlier this month, O'Leary teamed up with McCourt to pursue purchasing the app.

Frank McCourt

The former Dodgers owner and former CEO of McCourt Global has turned democratizing and improving the internet into a major philanthropic focus through his Project Liberty effort. The company announced in March that McCourt had put together a bid to purchase TikTok.

McCourt, during a December 8 appearance on CBS News, said he had "circled over $20 billion" for the potential sale.

"We're very serious about raising whatever capital is required to buy the platform and to be clear, we're looking to move the 170 million users over to a new protocol where the individuals will own and control their identity and their data," McCourt said. "We're not looking to replicate the existing version."

The billionaire businessman has titled his TikTok purchase project "The People's Bid."

McCourt told CBS that the People's Bid aims to protect user privacy and move users to "a new stack where you can't harvest without permission, so individuals will own and control their identity and their data" to promote an internet service that respects its users "as opposed to exploits them."

McCourt has secured the backing of Guggenheim Securities, an investment banking firm, and Kirkland & Ellis, one of the world's largest law firms.

On January 6 "The People's Bid" announced O'Leary had joined their effort. 

"Joining The People's Bid for TikTok is an opportunity to take action on an issue I'm deeply passionate about - protecting privacy and creating value for users," O'Leary said in a press release at the time.

A spokesperson for McCourt previously directed BI to a statement from the billionaire that said in part: "We are going to rebuild TikTok and prove that it's possible to enjoy the internet without sacrificing our privacy and safety."

MrBeast

Donaldson, whose goes by MrBeast on YouTube, where he's amassed 344 million subscribers, said in a post on X on Monday: "Okay fine, I'll buy Tik Tok so it doesn't get banned."

It was unclear how serious he was about buying the app, but in a follow up post on Tuesday Donaldson wrote: "Unironically I've had so many billionaires reach out to me since I tweeted this, let's see if we can pull this off."

In a video posted to TikTok on Wednesday, Donaldson said he had just gotten out of a meeting with "a bunch of billionaires" about buying the app.

"TikTok, we mean business," Donaldson said, adding, "We have an offer ready for you. We want to buy the platform. America deserves TikTok. Give me a seat at the table.  Let me save this platform, TikTok."

Representatives for Donaldson did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Representatives from Tikok and ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment from BI on Donaldson's stated interest in buying the app.

Steven Mnuchin

The former treasury secretary in March said he was putting together an investor group to try to purchase TikTok, CNBC reported.

Mnuchin didn't specify any other potential investors involved in the bid or the dollar amount they planned to offer for the social media site. In a May interview with Bloomberg Television, he said he'd replicate the app's signature algorithm to continue the service.

"My plan, if we were to purchase, it would be to rebuild the technology under US leadership, make sure that it's all disconnected from ByteDance going forward, and that it is very robust and secure," Mnuchin said.

Representatives for Mnuchin did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Bobby Kotick

The Wall Street Journal reported in March that the former chief executive of Activision was considering bidding for TikTok. The outlet reported the exact amount of his proposal was unspecified but would likely be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Journal reported Kotick approached OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other possible investors during a dinner at an Allen & Co. conference, discussing a potential deal that could allow OpenAI to train its artificial intelligence models on the data gathered from the app.

A spokesperson for Kotick previously told Business Insider, "Mr. Kotick has always believed a comprehensive reciprocal trade framework is preferable to singling out an individual company, and he still does."

Other possible investors

Other big names have previously shown interest in buying TikTok, including Microsoft, which in 2020 tried and failed to acquire the platform when, during his first administration in August 2020, President Donald Trump, citing concerns about ByteDance's ties to Beijing, issued executive orders forcing ByteDance to sell its TikTok US operations to an American company.

Walmart and the software company Oracle also assembled a bid to buy TikTok in 2020, but TikTok ultimately defeated Trump's orders in court and the acquisition plans did not materialize.

The companies have not publicly said whether they would make another offer now. Walmart, Oracle, and Microsoft representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent over the weekend.