Canadian businessman and investor Kevin O’Leary has made a $20 billion cash offer to purchase TikTok from its owners.
This comes in the wake of a bipartisan bill signed by President Biden that classified TikTok as a national security threat. The law mandates that ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, must sell or divest from the platform for it to remain available in U.S. app stores. ByteDance faces a deadline of Sunday to comply.
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the law, upholding the ban on TikTok.
During a Friday appearance on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom, O’Leary emphasized the potential fines that could be imposed on any service provider that continues to offer access to TikTok after the deadline.
“Starting midnight on the 19th, any service provider—whether it’s Apple, Oracle, or a video compression tech company—could face fines of $5,000 a day per user, which could amount to over a billion dollars a day,” O’Leary told anchor Bill Hemmer.
O’Leary also mentioned uncertainty around whether an executive order could override the law passed by Congress, referencing a 1937 case that had previously been applied in a similar context.
He went on to reaffirm his $20 billion cash offer for the platform, which has 170 million U.S. users. “Right now, $20 billion is on the table—cash, $20 billion,” O’Leary stated, adding that he is waiting to see if his offer will be accepted.
