Canadian Businessman, Kevin O’Leary Offers $20B Cash To Buy TikTok

Kevin O’Leary, a Canadian businessman and investor, has offered TikTok’s owners $20 billion in cash to buy the platform.

A bipartisan measure, signed by President Biden, labeled TikTok a threat to national security and required ByteDance, the network’s Chinese parent firm, to divest from or sell the platform in order for TikTok to stay available in American app stores. ByteDance’s deadline is Sunday.

The Supreme Court upheld the prohibition in a decision issued Friday in response to TikTok’s legal challenge.

During a Friday appearance on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” O’Leary mentioned the potential sanctions for any provider who enables access after the deadline.

“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.”

O’Leary went on to declare that he had made a $20 billion offer to buy the social networking platform, which has 170 million US users.

“Right now, $20 billion is on the table, cash, cash, $20 billion,” O’Leary stated at the end of the conversation, promoting his bid.

He stated he is waiting to see if the offer is sufficient.

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Nnamdi Okoli