Canadian businessman and investor Kevin O’Leary has tabled the sum of $20 billion to Chinese company ByteDance to acquire its social media platform TikTok.
Kevin O’Leary’s move comes hours after the US Supreme Court upheld the decision by President Joe Biden to ban the social media app over an alleged threat to national security.
In an appearance on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Friday, O’Leary pointed out that any provider who permits access after the January 19 deadline may face fines.
“As of midnight on the 19, any service provider … that could be an Apple, that could be an Oracle, it could be a video compression technology company that’s being paid as a consulting service, any of them that keep this thing alive is subject to $5,000 a day fine times 170 million,” O’Leary told anchor Bill Hemmer in the interview. “That’s over a billion dollars a day.”
“We don’t know if an executive order can override a law from Congress. There’s a case in 1937 that was used successfully, but you don’t know.”
He continued by saying that he had a $20 billion deal to purchase the social media network, which has 170 million subscribers in the United States.
“Right now, $20 billion is on the table, cash, cash, $20 billion,” O’Leary said.
This comes a week after ByteDance reacted to news making the rounds that billionaire businessman Elon Musk is allegedly making moves to buy out the US operations of TikTok.
Per a report by Bloomberg, the Chinese government is mulling the idea of selling the social media platform, which faces an impending ban in the US.
However, ByteDance has played down Elon Musk’s potential takeover while reacting to the report, which will potentially place the tech billionaire in an unprecedented position of owning X (formerly Twitter) and also overseeing the American operations of TikTok.
“We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction,” the company told CNBC.