As the deadline for the sale of TikTok by 2025 looms, people are wondering who could potentially buy the popular short video app. Considering its massive business in the United States, finding a buyer could be tough for ByteDance. However, a few candidates have shown interest in owning the lucrative social media platform.
Who will buy TikTok from ByteDance?
Many individual buyers and companies are volunteering to buy TikTok, including Steven Mnuchin, Kevin O’Leary, Bobby Kotick, and more.
Unless TikTok’s counteractions get the courts to stop its sale in the U.S., it will be sold to a suitable buyer. One estimate suggests that its business value in the country is between $35-40 billion. So, finding a buyer for that amount could be tough. But former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC in March that he would assemble a group of investors to potentially buy TikTok, so one particular investor doesn’t control it.
In an interview on Fox News, Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary stated that TikTok is “not going to get banned because I’m gonna buy it.” He added:
“Somebody’s going to buy it. It won’t be Meta, and it won’t be Google because…regulator [will] stop that.”
Further, former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick reportedly revealed the idea of purchasing TikTok to Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI during a dinner at the Sun Valley Conference.
Additionally, Rumble, a popular video-sharing platform, has already made a public offer to own TikTok. Its X handle even shared a letter from CEO Chris Pavlovski to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.
Meanwhile, other companies, including Microsoft and Walmart, along with Oracle, showed interest in buying TikTok in 2020. They could get back to the table once the sale moves forward.
Could Google or Meta buy TikTok?
Google, Meta, or any other tech company with a large social media presence would raise antitrust issues if they look to buy TikTok.
According to analysts (via CNN), any attempt by the well-established tech giants would trigger antitrust red flags. Speaking on the matter of a tech company getting into the TikTok buying game, a former Justice Department antitrust official, Gene Kimmelman, told CNN:
“If it’s Amazon, Microsoft, Google, or Meta, I just think you’re going to see substantial antitrust concern.”
He continued to say that Verizon or AT&T may not face such problems. Kimmelman added:
“If you were to say, like, an Intel, or a Cisco, maybe Oracle, I don’t know. If you were to tell me it’s Verizon, or AT&T, maybe it’s not as big of a problem.”
A principal analyst at Emarketer, Jasmine Enberg, also corroborated this. Even though she believes that tech giants would primarily be the ones with the resources to buy TikTok, most of them “wouldn’t be able to clear antitrust hurdles.”
For more updates, learn why the TikTok ban was approved by the US Senate.
