With the future of popular social media app TikTok on the line, a number of potential buyers have come out of the woodworks to potentially snap up the platform — and its 170 million monthly U.S. users.
After going dark in the U.S. for about 14 hours over the weekend, the Chinese-owned video app was restored after then-President-elect Donald Trump said he would issue an executive order on his first day in office to delay enforcement of a ban.
On Monday, Trump delivered: The newly inaugurated president signed an executive order delaying the ban by 75 days. But with the Supreme Court upholding a law requiring that TikTok parent ByteDance sell the company’s U.S. assets to an American company or be banned, there’s still a chance for TikTok to come under new, U.S.-based ownership.
Here are some of the people and companies who have — or could — make a bid for the platform.
Chinese government officials considered selling TikTok’s U.S. operations to Tesla CEO and close Trump ally Elon Musk, Bloomberg reported earlier this month, ahead of the first ban deadline.
When asked Tuesday whether Trump would be open to Musk buying TikTok, the president said: “I would be if he wanted to buy it, yes.”
Although Musk’s ownership of rival social media platform X (formerly Twitter) presents a hurdle, officials had reportedly discussed a scenario in which X takes control control of TikTok U.S. and jointly runs the businesses, Bloomberg reported.
While Oracle chairman Larry Ellison hasn’t officially put forward an offer, Trump indicated that he would also be happy if Ellison bought the social media platform.
“I’d like Larry to buy it, too,” Trump said following his response to the question about Musk.
Ellison stood alongside Trump at the White House on Tuesday, announcing an up to $500 billion investment deal with SoftBank, Oracle, and OpenAI. The deal was later bashed by Musk on X.
Jimmy Donaldson, the online personality who goes by the name MrBeast, said in a post on X that he would “buy TikTok so it doesn’t get banned.”
“Unironically I’ve had so many billionaires reach out to me since I tweeted this, let’s see if we can pull this off,” he wrote.
MrBeast has more than 500 million followers across all of his social media platforms, making him the most followed creator in the world. He was the highest-paid YouTube star in 2022, and has said he brings in between $600 million and $700 million in revenue each year.
The People’s Bid for TikTok, a group formed by billionaire Frank McCourt in partnership with his nonprofit organization Project Liberty, said earlier this month that it had delivered a proposal to ByteDance to acquire TikTok’s U.S. assets.
The group includes Shark Tank star and investor Kevin O’Leary, who announced that he would join forces with McCourt to buy the popular video platform.
Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI made an official bid to create a new merged entity with TikTok U.S. and new capital partners, CNBC reported.
Although Amazon hasn’t made any public statements, a former TikTok employee speculated to Forbes back in September that the e-commerce giant was weighing the purchase as a way to get its foot in the door in the social media world.
Last August, TikTok announced that it was partnering with Amazon to allow users to browse and buy Amazon products directly on TikTok.
Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of video game developer Activision Blizzard, expressed interest in buying TikTok to ByteDance co-founder Zhang Yiming, the Wall Street Journal reported last March. Kotick reportedly pitched the idea to a group of people, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Last March, former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC that he was looking to “put together a group” to buy TikTok. Months later, Mnuchin told Bloomberg that he was in touch with “a lot of tech companies” about buying the app and recreating its algorithm under U.S. leadership.
The post From Elon Musk to MrBeast, here are some of TikTok’s potential buyers appeared first on Quartz.
