After the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the US if it is not sold by Sunday, rumors about potential buyers for the popular social media platform continue to circulate online.
From Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to YouTuber MrBeast, the growing list of speculative buyers continues to give fans and app users a glimmer of hope.
President Joe Biden, who after congressional approval signed a bill to sell or ban TikTok on national security grounds in April, decided this week to leave it up to President-elect Donald Trump to enforce the ban on the sharing app. videos.
“Our position on this has been clear: TikTok should continue to operate, but under American ownership,” a White House official said. “Given the timing when it goes into effect during a holiday weekend the day before the inauguration, it will be up to the next Administration to implement.”
Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first administration, has since promised to “save” the popular app, though it’s unclear how he might do so. In a Social Truth post on Friday, Trump said: “The Supreme Court decision was expected and everyone should respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I have to have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”
With just a few days left, here’s what you need to know about TikTok’s rumored potential buyers.
Who owns TikTok?
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a private global company based in Beijing founded by Chinese entrepreneurs. According to TikTok, about 60% of the parent company is owned by global institutional investors, 20% by the company’s founders and 20% by employees.
TikTok, whose global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, is not a China-based company as the app is not even available for use in the Asian country. Douyin, which is another platform owned by ByteDance, is TikTok’s counterpart in mainland China.
Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean businessman, is the app’s CEO. Chew will sit with Trump’s high-profile guests as the president-elect delivers his inaugural address on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Musk, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg are all said to be in attendance, the media said. .
Why is TikTok banned?
TikTok’s ban stems from concerns that US officials have about the level of control the Chinese government has over the company.
The Justice Department’s two main concerns with the platform are the possibility that the Chinese government could decide to dictate what content users watch to influence public opinion, and the country potentially collecting the sensitive data of millions of US users of the app.
Who can buy TikTok?
Musk, MrBeast, investor and “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty have been the names primarily linked to the acquisition of TikTok.
Other names that have been rumored as possible buyers include Bobby Kotick, former CEO of video game publisher Activision; Walmart CEO Doug McMillon; Microsoft; and video sharing platform Rumble.
Banning TikTok:The Supreme Court upholds the law that could ban the platform in the US
Could Elon Musk buy TikTok?
Although Musk has not publicly announced an intention to buy TikTok, he denounced the ban on the platform in April.
“In my opinion, TikTok should not be banned in the US, even though such a ban could benefit the X platform,” Musk wrote in an X post. “To do so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression. This is not what America stands for.”
Musk, who along with businessman Vivek Ramaswamy was appointed by Trump to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force to cut government spending, has experience buying and owning a social media platform after bought X (formerly Twitter) in October. 2022.
Chinese officials have also mentioned Musk and working with the Trump administration when discussing contingency plans for a TikTok ban, Bloomberg reported. Musk has previously met with Chinese leaders and has been supportive of them and the country, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
When asked about Musk’s potential acquisition of TikTok, a representative for the platform told the WSJ, “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction.”
Is Frank McCourt, Kevin O’Leary or MrBeast buying TikTok?
McCourt, O’Leary and MrBeast have all either expressed their desire to buy TikTok or even directly said they offered.
MrBeast, whose real name is James “Jimmy” Donaldson, shared an X post earlier this week saying: “Ok ok I’m going to buy Tik Tok so it doesn’t get banned.” The YouTuber, who Forbes reported earns $84 million a year, then posted a follow-up tweet saying, “Unironically I’ve had so many billionaires contact me since I posted this, let’s see if we can let’s do this.”
While MrBeast’s remarks remain murky, McCourt announced last week that his Project Liberty initiative made a formal offer for Bytedance. Liberty Project president Tomicah Tillemann said in a statement that the organization would not publicly disclose the amount of the offer, however, the group previously disclosed that it secured $20 billion in verbal commitments from an unnamed group of investors willing to buy TikTok.
O’Leary could be one of the investors Project Liberty has hinted at after he confirmed he would join McCourt in a plan to buy TikTok.
Kotick, McMillon, Rumble and Microsoft remain possibilities to buy TikTok
Kotick is a potential buyer of TikTok as he has previously spoken with ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming about buying the platform, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2024.
Rumble offered to buy TikTok in March 2024 with the company saying it was “ready to join a consortium with other parties” to buy the app, Forbes reported. Neither Rumble nor CEO Chris Pavlovski have disclosed details about the offer, the newspaper said.
Walmart and Microsoft will return to the negotiating table to buy TikTok after the companies proposed a bid in 2020 to buy the US arm of the platform. McMillon and Walmart also joined a bid with Oracle to take over TikTok’s US operations in 2020, but ByteDance was granted an injunction, halting Trump’s planned ban and ultimately scuttling the deal.
Since then, McMillon hosted the ByteDance founder in Bentonville, Arkansas in 2023, The New York Post reported, citing sources close to the situation.
Contributing: Mike Snider, Greta Cross, Clare Mulroy, Maureen Groppe & Rebecca Morin/ USA TODAY
