“Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary announced Monday that he has joined a bid to buy the U.S. operations of TikTok at a critical juncture in the platform’s future in the country.
In an interview with Fox News, O’Leary said he visited Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, where he got a chance to discuss his plan to join forces with American business executive and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers Frank McCourt to acquire control of the social media app’s U.S. assets.
“I have joined with Frank McCourt to buy TikTok,” O’Leary told the network. “This is a very complicated deal. It’s a multi-billion dollar deal.”
O’Leary said he plans to advance his bid by working with outgoing President Joe Biden and Trump once he takes office.
“This is a bipartisan situation,” he said. “We have to work initially with Biden, and we want to. And then… Trump will be who we have to work with to close the deal in the months ahead. So I wanted to let [Trump] know as well as others in his Cabinet that we’re doing this and we’re going to need their help.”
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Friday in TikTok’s challenge to legislation signed into law by Biden earlier this year. The law requires the platform to divest its Chinese ownership by Jan. 19 or risk a nationwide ban. TikTok has argued that the law is unconstitutional.
Trump called on the Supreme Court to pause enforcement of the law that would ban TikTok until after he takes office to allow him to pursue a “political resolution.” The Justice Department has opposed his request.
McCourt, who made it onto Forbes’ 2024 billionaires list with a net worth of about $1.4 billion, spoke to Semafor’s Ben Smith in May about his bid to buy TikTok, while O’Leary had also separately declared his interest in the platform.
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has insisted it has no plans to sell the site.
Still, a press release announcing O’Leary’s decision to join the bid said the “Shark Tank” investor is partnering with The People’s Bid for TikTok, an initiative led by McCourt to buy the U.S. assets of the site and “rebuild the platform in a way that prioritizes the privacy of its 170 million American users.”
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“Kevin and I, along with the thousands of supporters who have come forward to back The People’s Bid, firmly believe we can build a better TikTok — one that protects our national security and becomes a safe, secure platform that millions of people on the app will trust,” McCourt said in a statement. “We look forward to working with President-elect Trump to save TikTok.”
Trump, who tried to ban the platform nationwide during his first term in office, has since had a change of heart. In a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday, he indicated he had little incentive to stop the platform from operating in the U.S., pointing to his popularity with TikTok users.