From MrBeast to Elon Musk, who is in the running to buy TikTok?

The clock is ticking - again - to find a buyer for TikTok, the popular short-form video app. 

ByteDance, the Chinese parent company behind the immensely popular app, is required to sell the app to a US-based buyer or face a nationwide ban, according to a law voted last year by the US Congress. 

President Donald Trump has now pushed back the sale of the app by 75 days, after it went offline for a few hours on January 19th.

The new US president proposed a 50-50 partnership between ByteDance and an American stakeholder. 

ByteDance has repeatedly said it refuses to sell, but that has not stopped potential buyers from coming forward. 

Now the field of interested people vying for a say in the app is widening.

California-based Perplexity AI recently submitted a bid to merge with TikTok’s US business and give the government up to 50 per cent shares in that new entity, the Associated Press reported. 

Other contenders for the platform are politicians, tech billionaires, and a YouTube star. 

MrBeast aka Jimmy Donaldson

One of the names on the list to invest in TikTok is YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast online.  

He’s part of a “syndicate of investors” led by Jesse Tinsley, the founder of Recruiter.com, that are proposing an “all-cash offer,” according to a statement from US law firm Paul Hastings LLP last week and a post on X.

Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesperson for MrBeast, told the Associated Press that Donaldson is having several ongoing discussions with several buyers, and there are no exclusive agreements with any of them yet. 

Donaldson first wrote on X that he would consider buying TikTok earlier this month, a few days ahead of the initial ban’s coming into force.

He claimed in a follow-up post that “so many billionaires” had reached out to him to make the deal happen. 

In a follow-up TikTok video on Wednesday, Donaldson said that he “means business” and that he has an offer ready for the platform. 

“We want to buy the platform, America deserves TikTok,” Donaldson said in the video. “Give me a seat at the table, let me save this platform”. 

Donaldson has since changed his biography on the platform to “future CEO of TikTok?” 

MrBeast is one of the world’s most successful internet creators with over 500 million followers across his various social media platforms.

He earned about $85 million (€81.3 million) in 2024, according to an estimate from Forbes.

Frank McCourt and The People’s Bid

The first to enter the most recent race for TikTok was billionaire Frank McCourt, a US real estate mogul and the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

McCourt started “The People’s Bid,” a consortium of law firms, technologists, academics and citizens that want to acquire TikTok with the goal of “placing people and data empowerment at the centre of the platform’s design and purpose,” in 2024 according to their website reads. 

“The foundation of our digital infrastructure is broken, and it’s time to fix it,” McCourt said in a May 2024 press release. 

“We see this potential acquisition as an incredible opportunity to catalyse an alternative to the current tech model that has colonised the internet”. 

The group said in December it had secured commitments from investors - which it did not disclose - totalling more than $20 billion (€19.1 billion) in capital, according to the AP. 

Trump weighs in on TikTok

If it was up to President Trump, TikTok would go to Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison. 

Trump told reporters at a press briefing on Tuesday, shortly after his inauguration, that he would be “open” to Musk or Ellison buying the platform if either of them wants it, according to CNBC. 

Musk’s name was first floated after Bloombergreported that Chinese officials were in talks to sell part of the app’s operations in the US to Musk. 

Musk said on his social media platform X that he’s been against a TikTok ban “for a long time” because the ban goes against “freedom of speech”. 

“That said, the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced," Musk wrote. 

Ellison on the other hand has not publicly commented on a TikTok acquisition this time around, but the company won a bid in 2020 to become the app’s cloud technology provider.

One condition of the deal was that Oracle became a minority investor in TikTok Global, Oracle CEO Safra Catz said in a press release at the time. 

Catz added that they were confident they could give a “highly secure environment to TikTok and ensure data privacy to TikTok’s American users”.

Other possible buyers

Other potential buyers include Steven Mnuchin, a former US Treasury Secretary, who reaffirmed his desire to invest in the app on CNBC recently.

Bobby Kotick, the former chief executive of Activision, could also be in the running, according to reports.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Kotick approached OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other investors during a conference dinner to express his interest in acquiring the app. 

Euronews Next has reached out to TikTok representatives and all the prospective buyers mentioned in this article but did not receive immediate replies. 

(Source: Euronews)