Will TikTok find a way to remain legal in the U.S. under a new ownership structure?
A range of possible new owners for TikTok in the U.S. — including MrBeast, Elon Musk and Oracle founder Larry Ellison — have emerged as a federal law banning TikTok in the country went into effect this Sunday, Jan. 19, after Chinese parent company ByteDance failed to divest its stake in the popular video app. President Donald Trump, on his first day back in the White House, ordered his attorney general to not enforce the law for 75 days as his administration seeks a resolution. (Legal experts say Trump’s executive order may not prevent TikTok tech partners from being exposed to some $850 billion in fines if they violate the law.)
“SAVE TIKTOK!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Jan. 19. Trump has proposed ByteDance and TikTok’s owners give the U.S. government a 50% ownership position in a TikTok joint venture. If the U.S. does not approve TikTok, “there’s no value,” Trump told reporters Monday at the White House. “So if we create that value, why aren’t we entitled to like half?”
Whether ByteDance or the Chinese government would agree to such terms for a TikTok sale is unknown. But in the meantime, several parties are circling a potential deal for the app, which analysts have valued at as much as $50 billion.
MrBeast, the YouTube impresario whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is part of an investor group led by Employer.com founder Jesse Tinsley that is offering to buy TikTok. A rep for Donaldson confirmed that he is part of Tinsley’s TikTok bid but otherwise declined to comment. MrBeast is the most-followed individual creator on YouTube and recently hosted “Beast Games,” a “Squid Game”-style reality competition series that reached 50 million viewers in its first 25 days on Amazon Prime Video.
Tinsley hasn’t revealed the dollar amount of the group’s TikTok bid. “Now, we’re awaiting a response from ByteDance’s board,” he said in an X post on Monday. “Our goal is to ensure TikTok stays accessible, thriving, and aligned with the values that make America great.”
MrBeast’s interest in TikTok started as a joke. “Okay fine, I’ll buy Tik Tok so it doesn’t get banned,” he posted Jan. 13 on X. One day later, it seemed like the gag had become real: “Unironically I’ve had so many billionaires reach out to me since I tweeted this, let’s see if we can pull this off 🙌🏻,” MrBeast wrote in a follow-up post.
According to Tinsley, the investor consortium’s legal team includes Brad Bondi, the brother of Pam Bondi, the lawyer and former Florida attorney general who Trump nominated as U.S. attorney general. The lawyers “are ready to structure the deal in whatever way President Trump and our government wish,” Tinsley wrote on X.
At a press briefing Tuesday at the White House, Trump was asked if he was open to Musk — the tech billionaire who has become a close adviser to the president — buying TikTok. “I would be, if [Musk] wanted to buy it, yes,” Trump replied. He added, “I’d like Larry to buy it, too,” referring to Oracle’s Ellison.
One big question mark in all of this: ByteDance has not indicated that it’s willing to sell TikTok’s U.S. business. The TikTok divest-or-ban law specifically prohibits TikTok’s operation in the country if it continues to use the content-recommendation algorithm controlled by ByteDance.
But that has not prevented other offers for TikTok from floating in over the transom.
Project Liberty, an internet advocacy group run by billionaire Frank McCourt, has publicized a proposal for TikTok’s U.S. assets backed by others including “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary and Guggenheim Securities. “Project Liberty’s bid is the only solution on the table that complies with the law,” McCourt said in a statement Tuesday. “Specifically, a qualified divestiture requires selling TikTok to an American buyer with a clean, American-made tech stack and abandoning TikTok’s algorithm. Project Liberty has a proven tech stack that is already in use and offers a clear path to address the national security concerns of Congress while keeping TikTok operational.”
Meanwhile, artificial-intelligence search start-up Perplexity AI on Jan. 18 submitted an offer to ByteDance to merge with TikTok in a deal that would allow most of ByteDance’s investors to retain their equity stakes, CNBC reported, citing an anonymous source.
