American businessman Frank McCourt, the real estate mogul who seeks to develop the Internet, announced that he plans to create a consortium to buy the assets of the TikTok platform in the United States, he wrote. Bloomberg.
The former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team and CEO of investment firm McCourt Global is likely to make a bid to buy the platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts estimate TikTok's value in the United States at between $35 and $40 billion
– The agency writes. US President Joe Biden's decision to force TikTok's Chinese parent company to sell the app in the US or face a ban has prompted many players to discuss potential deals.
Former US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said he was “very interested” in the app, while former Google chief Eric Schmidt said he had previously considered submitting bids. ByteDance, which is challenging US law in court, said it had no intention of selling the device.
McCourt, who sold the Dodgers for $2 billion in 2012, recently tried to “reinvent” social media with an initiative called the Freedom Project. The group, which goes public in 2021, aims to take on Meta Platforms Inc. And other Internet giants. McCourt allocated $500 million to the initiative this year.
We see this potential acquisition as a great opportunity to catalyze an alternative to the current technology model that has colonized the Internet
McCourt said. The goal is for TikTok to transition to an open source protocol and give American users more control over their information. It is not yet clear whether the project has already received capital.
TikTok and Chinese company ByteDance spent $7 million this year to try to prevent the US government from banning the social network in the country. TikTok's owner is reportedly shutting down the app rather than selling it after the company exhausted all legal options against legislation banning the platform from US app stores.
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