It’s a deal that TikTok may not be able to refuse: $20 billion in cash from popular entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary.
“Right now, $20 billion’s on the table. Cash,” O’Leary said Friday on “America’s Newsroom,” just minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law requiring the Chinese-owned company to sell or be banned.
“There’s a reason that Congress put this order in front of the Supreme Court. There’s a reason they ruled in favor of it. It’s not worth taking the risk,” he continued. “And so the obvious solution is to sell it to an American syndicate as per the order.”
In its decision, the Supreme Court backed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a law passed by Congress last April with wide bipartisan support. The law gave TikTok nine months to either divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or be removed from U.S.-based app stores and hosting services.
BIDEN WON’T ENFORCE TIKTOK BAN AFTER SIGNING LAW LAST YEARS, LEAVING FATE TO TRUMP: OFFICIAL
Congress originally cited concerns over the app’s Chinese ownership, which members said meant the app had the potential to be weaponized or used to amass vast amounts of user data, including from the roughly 170 million Americans who use TikTok.
Kevin O’Leary is reportedly offering $20 billion in cash to buy TikTok. (Getty Images)
TikTok, ByteDance and several users of the app swiftly sued to block the ban in May, arguing the legislation would suppress free speech for the millions of Americans who use the platform. After a lower court upheld the ban, the Supreme Court agreed to hear TikTok’s emergency request to either block or pause implementation of the law under a fast-track timeline just nine days before the ban was slated to go into effect.
But now, TikTok will “go dark” by midnight on Sunday, O’Leary notes, while adding that the clock is “ticking” to strike a deal.
“As of midnight on the 19th, any service provider — that could be an Apple, that could be an Oracle, it could be a video compression technology company that’s being paid as a consulting service, any of them — to keep this thing alive, it’s subject to [a] $5,000 a day fine times 170 million. That’s over $1 billion a day,” O’Leary explained.
President-elect Trump posted on Truth Social that his “decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future,” but as president, Trump could move to delay the law by not enforcing it vigorously. This allows TikTok more time to find a buyer, continue operating as-is or take other actions that would uphold the status quo.