Canadian businessman and investor Kevin O’Leary has made a bold offer of $20 billion in cash to purchase TikTok from its owners.
This comes after a bipartisan bill signed by President Biden, which labeled TikTok a national security threat.
The bill requires ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to either divest or sell the platform for TikTok to remain available in U.S. app stores. ByteDance has until Sunday to comply with the directive.
On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the law, supporting the ban on TikTok.
During an appearance on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom, O’Leary highlighted the potential fines for any service provider that continues to host TikTok after the deadline.
“As of midnight on the 19th, any service provider—whether it’s Apple, Oracle, or a video compression tech company—keeping TikTok alive could face fines of $5,000 a day per 170 million users,” O’Leary explained. “That’s over a billion dollars a day.”
He also mentioned the uncertainty of whether an executive order could override the law, citing a 1937 case as precedent but noting the ambiguity.
O’Leary then confirmed his $20 billion cash offer for the social media platform, which has 170 million U.S. users. “Right now, $20 billion is on the table, cash, cash, $20 billion,” he said, adding that he is waiting to see if the offer is sufficient.
