The former head of Blizzard is also interested

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden signed a bill requiring ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to sell the platform to an American buyer. Otherwise, the popular social network will be banned in the US. The US government is concerned about ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese government.

ByteDance has nine months to sell. If the sale was not completed within this time, but the situation was moving in that direction, President Biden could extend the deadline by three months, writes The Verge. It is unclear whether the sale would also include buying out the TikTok algorithm behind its success.

It is also not known whether the Chinese government would even allow the sale of the platform. TikTok itself now plans to challenge the law in court, according to spokesperson Alex Haurek. “While we continue to challenge this unconstitutional ban, we will continue to invest and innovate to ensure that TikTok remains a place where all Americans can feel free to come share their experiences, find joy, and be inspired,” Haurek said in a TikTok video. He called the law not only a ban on TikTok, but also censorship of Americans’ voices.

TikTok has previously called on its American users to protest the ban. He argued that the law deprives 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free speech. On the other hand, China, where ByteDance’s parent company comes from, has banned American social networks for a long time. For example, Google, YouTube, X, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook are banned there because they all violate Chinese rules regarding data collection or content sharing.

Despite these questions, several American entrepreneurs have already expressed interest in TikTok. The local media are only speculating about others.

Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin

For example, investment banker and film producer Steve Mnuchin, who served in the Trump administration as Secretary of Finance, showed interest in buying TikTok. Mnuchin has previously said there is a need for a US company to control the platform and told CNBC in March that he plans to put together a group to make the purchase.

Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary

Kevin O’Leary rose to fame as a judge on Shark Tank. He told CNBC that he plans to put together a group that will offer $20 billion to $30 billion. That’s roughly 90 percent less than the company’s projected value. It was valued at $220 billion in 2023, writes CNBC. It operates at this price because of the likely possibility that the app will be sold without the expensive algorithms and data that make it so successful.

But price estimates differ. According to the Los Angeles Times, the platform with the algorithm would be worth $100 billion. Without the algorithm, TikTok would be worth $30 billion to $40 billion, Daniel Ives, managing director of Wedbush Securities, told the newspaper.

Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick

According to The Wall Street Journal, the former director of Activision Blizzard, which develops and sells video games, is also looking for potential partners for the purchase of TikTok. According to the newspaper, Kotick had previously approached ByteDance’s executive chairman, Zhang Yiming, and expressed his interest in buying TikTok, reportedly for a price in the hundreds of billions of dollars. He has already approached several people about the offer, according to the paper, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Rumble, the video-sharing platform, is also interested in TikTok, sharing a letter Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski sent to TikTok CEO Zhou Cze on the X platform in March. It says Rumble is ready to “join a consortium of other bidders interested in buying and operating TikTok in the US.”

The sale of TikTok was discussed as early as 2020, when a ban on the platform was considered under the administration of former President Donald Trump. According to Forbes magazine, TikTok could theoretically be interested even at the time, such as Oracle and Walmart. They teamed up in 2020 to try to buy the platform and almost succeeded, but the US government reportedly halted further progress at the time due to security concerns. However, none of the companies has yet shown interest.

In the same year, Microsoft also considered buying TikTok, and the two companies even started discussing a possible purchase, but TikTok ultimately chose Oracle. According to Forbes, this technology giant could also be interested in the purchase.

In theory, the companies Meta or Google could also be interested in acquiring TikTok, but due to their dominant position in the field of digital advertising, their hopes for a purchase would be slim, writes the ABC news channel.

What is TikTok

The Chinese social network for sharing and watching short videos, TikTok, stirs emotions. The mobile application, which is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, collects data about users, according to experts. For example, the domestic National Office for Cyber ​​and Information Security (NÚKIB) warned against its use on devices that have access to critical infrastructure. For example, the European Commission or Canada or Denmark have taken steps to restrict the application.

“Acquisition by Google and Meta is absolutely out of the question. The Department of Justice’s antitrust division would be horrified by that,” Florian Ederer, professor of markets, public policy and law at Boston University, told ABC News.

According to Forbes, however, these companies would gain the most if TikTok were banned completely in the US. According to analysts, after the ban, most digital advertising would be transferred to either the Meta or Google platforms. According to ABC, Apple or Amazon, for example, would face fewer problems with the antitrust authority in the event of an interest in the purchase.