Jimmy Donaldson, popularly known as the YouTuber MrBeast, is part of a consortium of investors aiming to purchase TikTok. The group, which reportedly includes Jesse Tinsley of Employer.com, Roblox co-founder and CEO David Baszucki, and Anchorage Digital's Nathan McCauley, has made a bid of over $20 billion. They estimate that securing TikTok would require around $25 billion.
However, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, has stated that its U.S. operations are not on the market. The investment group led by Tinsley has yet to receive a direct response from ByteDance.
Donaldson's representatives have indicated that he is in discussions with multiple parties and is prepared to align with the leading bidder. On January 22, Donaldson expressed his enthusiasm on Twitter, saying, “The leading groups who are all credible bidding on Tik Tok have reached out for us to help them, I’m excited to partner/make this a reality. Big things cooking.”
Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump mentioned that Microsoft was negotiating to buy TikTok and expressed his desire for a bidding war. Microsoft has not yet confirmed these talks.
TikTok faced a brief outage for its 170 million U.S. users just before a law was set to take effect on January 19, which would have forced ByteDance to sell TikTok due to national security concerns or face a ban. The Supreme Court rejected TikTok's First Amendment challenge, leading to the app going dark temporarily. The justices noted that while data collection is widespread, "TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government’s national security concerns.”
Following assurances from Trump, TikTok was able to restore its service without facing penalties. TikTok celebrated this as a victory for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship, committing to work with Trump on a long-term solution to keep the platform in the U.S.
After taking office on January 20, Trump signed an executive order to delay the enforcement of the law by 75 days. He is currently engaging with various companies and individuals, including Elon Musk, about potentially acquiring TikTok.
