Here's who could buy TikTok if parent company ByteDance has to sell its stake
TikTok could avoid being banned in the US if it can find a buyer. Here's a list of people and companies that could be likely buyers for the platform.
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- The House has passed legislation that could ban TikTok in the US unless ByteDance sells it to a US-based entity.
- It now heads to the Senate for a vote. If it passes there, it'd reach President Biden's desk.
- Here's a look at some people and companies that could buy the app.
Buyers are beginning to raise their hands for what might be one the biggest — and most geopolitically tense — sales in recent history.
The US House of Representatives voted 360-58 on Saturday to advance legislation that would essentially ban TikTok in the United States unless its parent company, China-based ByteDance, can find a US-based buyer within nine months of the bill becoming law, with a possible extension of an additional three months if a deal is in the works.
While the legislation still needs to pass the Senate, President Joe Biden has said he would sign it into law if it reaches his desk. With the House bundling the ban into a larger foreign aid bill, that's looking like a stronger possibility.
The wildly popular social media platform's US business is worth somewhere between $35 to $40 billion, which means that finding a buyer whose pockets are deep enough isn't going to be easy.
And with over 170 million users in the United States alone, any tech giant that foots the bill — since companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft might be the only ones with the funds — will likely run into antitrust concerns.
Even if the bill goes through, TikTok appears to be gearing up for a legal battle. It is already mobilizing users to call their local representatives to express their opposition.
It's also possible that the Chinese government will intervene.
When lawmakers in Washington called for a sale of TikTok back in 2020, China's commerce ministry said the government would need to sign off, according to The New York Times. China's then foreign minister, Wang Wenbin, also said the United States was "resorting to hegemonic moves when one could not succeed in fair competition."
So, it's not certain that TikTok will be sold off soon. But that hasn't stopped a handful of people from publicly expressing their interest in buying the platform.
Here's a rundown of what people and companies could be TikTok's next owner.
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The former CEO of gaming giant Activision has reportedly floated the idea of buying TikTok to ByteDance cofounder Zhang Yiming and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources familiar with the conversations.
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The former treasury secretary said in March that he was assembling a group of investors to buy TikTok.
"I think the legislation should pass — I think it should be sold," Mnuchin told CNBC, diverging with his former boss, former president Donald Trump, who has said he opposes the bill.
"I understand the technology. It's a great business. And I'm going to put together a group to buy TikTok,'" Mnuchin said. He did not offer specific names but said the group would be organized such that "no one investor controls this."
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The Shark Tank investor has said he'd buy the platform or join a syndicate that plans on buying it, in an interview on Fox News in March.
"Not going to get banned because I'm gonna buy it," O'Leary said. "Somebody's going to buy it. It won't be Meta, and it won't be Google because a regulator will stop that."
O'Leary also proposed launching a bipartisan group to overhaul the company and place it under US control.
"This is worth billions. It's one of the most successful advertising platforms in social media today," O'Leary said. "All my companies use it. I'll buy it."
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Back in 2020, after former president Donald Trump issued two executive orders demanding that TikTok divest its US operations to a US company, Oracle and Walmart came together in an attempt to take a stake in the US spinoff. TikTok defeated Trump's order in court. But it also partnered with Oracle on Project Texas, an initiative that routed American user data to Oracle-owned servers.
Since the House passed the bill, neither company has yet said publicly whether they would make another offer.
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Microsoft could try for the second time to buy TikTok after its failed deal to buy the platform a few years ago.
"The likely buyers for TikTok strategically for this asset would be Microsoft, Oracle (e.g. Project Texas) in our view given past interest and strategically would make a logical fit," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note Monday.
At Vox's Code Conference in 2021, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he was "pretty intrigued" about a possible deal and that the app was "a great property."
"It was an interesting product, and also the way it was engineered, quite frankly, appealed a lot more to me and Microsoft. The way it's about design and AI, I like that," he said at the time.