Canadian businessman and investor Kevin O’Leary has put in the sum of $20 billion offer to Chinese company ByteDance to acquire its social media platform TikTok.
The move by O’Leary’s came hours after the US Supreme Court upheld President Joe Biden’s decision to ban TikTok over an alleged threat to national security.
During a recent appearance on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom”, O’Leary stated that any provider who permits access after the January 19 deadline may face fines.
He said: “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. 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 added that he had a $20 billion deal to acquire the social media network, which has 170 million subscribers in the United States.
He said: “Right now, $20 billion is on the table, cash, cash, $20 billion.”
This came a week after ByteDance reacted to news making the rounds that billionaire businessman Elon Musk is allegedly planning to buy out the US operations of TikTok.
According to Bloomberg, the Chinese government is mulling the idea of selling the social media platform, which faces an imminent ban in the US.
Meanwhile, ByteDance has played down Elon Musk’s potential acquisition while reacting to the report, which will potentially put the tech billionaire in an unprecedented position of owning both X (formerly Twitter) TikTok.
While talking to CNBC, the company said: “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction.”
