Jimmy Donaldson, better known as YouTuber MrBeast, is part of a group of investors that is reportedly trying to buy TikTok with a bid of over $20 billion.
Bloomberg reported that Donaldson has partnered with Jesse Tinsley, the founder of Employer.com, Roblox co-founder and CEO David Baszucki, and head of crypto platform Anchorage Digital Nathan McCauley to attempt to buy the social media giant. The group said it believes it will take $25 billion to buy TikTok.
Tiktok owner ByteDance has said its U.S. business is not for sale, and the group led by Tinsley admitted it has yet to hear back directly.
Representatives for Donaldson said he was in talks with several parties and hopes to join the eventual front-runner, so may end up switching sides depending on how this goes. “The leading groups who are all credible bidding on Tik Tok have reached out for us to help them, I’m excited to partner/make this a reality,” Donaldson tweeted on January 22. “Big things cooking.”
Earlier this week, U.S. president Donald Trump said Microsoft was in talks to buy TikTok, and that he hoped to see a bidding war over the app. Microsoft has yet to confirm Trump’s claim.
TikTok was brought offline for its 170 million users in the U.S. just before a law requiring its Chinese owner ByteDance to either sell it on national security grounds or face a ban on January 19. The app went dark after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal following TikTok’s First Amendment challenge.
The nine justices acknowledged that data collection and analysis is a common practice in the digital age, but added: “TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government’s national security concerns.”
TikTok then came back online after assurances from Trump that the social media company wouldn’t face penalties for restoring service.
“It’s a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship,” TikTok said at the time. “We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”
After taking office on January 20, Trump signed an executive order seeking to delay the enforcement of the law by 75 days. He’s in talks with a number of companies and people about a potential buyout of Tiktok, and has said he’s open to X/Twitter owner Elon Musk taking control.
Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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