Kevin O’Leary, famous for his role as “Mr. Terrific” on US series Shark Tank, has revealed plans to join billionaire Frank McCourt’s consortium in a high-stakes effort to take over TikTok.
The move comes amid mounting pressure on the Chinese-owned video platform, which could be banned in the US if parent company ByteDance fails to pull the app by January 19.
Last spring, President Joe Biden signed legal action forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations by a deadline this month or face a ban — removing the app from U.S. app stores and disabling access via web browsers. TikTok has challenged this legislation, arguing that it constitutes censorship and violates the First Amendment rights of the United States. However, supporters of the ban claim that the platform poses a potential threat to national security by sharing data with Chinese authorities.
McCourt, founder of Project Liberty and CEO of McCourt Global, announced in December that he was gathering a group of backers — dubbed “The People’s Bid to Buy TikTok.” The primary goal of Project Liberty is to return control of user data to the users themselves. According to McCourt, verbal commitments of up to $20 billion have already been made for the acquisition.
O’Leary told Fox News on Monday that he and McCourt would need to cooperate with President-elect Donald Trump to complete any deal, especially since Trump has asked the Supreme Court to delay the ban so he can try to save the platform. The Supreme Court is scheduled to review the ban on Friday, and Trump will be sworn in the day after the deadline.
“This is not just about buying TikTok’s US assets,” O’Leary said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter). “It’s about something much bigger: protecting the privacy of 170 million American users. It’s about empowering creators and small businesses. It’s about building a platform that prioritizes people over algorithms.
Neither Project Liberty nor Kevin O’Leary responded to requests for comment Tuesday.