YouTube giant MrBeast expressed interest in purchasing TikTok, which will potentially be banned in the United States on Jan. 19 if the China-based app is not sold to new leadership or saved by the Supreme Court by then.
“Okay fine, I’ll buy Tik Tok so it doesn’t get banned,” MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, wrote on X Monday night.
The tweet generated more than 33.4 million views on X.
In a follow-up post shared Tuesday, Donaldson wrote, “Unironically I’ve had so many billionaires reach out to me since I tweeted this, let’s see if we can pull this off.”
Donaldson did not share further details on which “billionaires” reached out to him following his first post about purchasing the app.
The YouTube star is not the first person to show interest in purchasing TikTok in hopes of keeping the app available in the U.S.
Who has shown interest in buying TikTok?
In April, a policy was passed by Congress and signed by President Biden that will require app stores to stop offering TikTok in the U.S. on Sunday, Jan. 19 if it is not sold by then.
TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, as well as some content creators, challenged the law in court, but the Supreme Court appeared ready to uphold the policy during oral arguments on Friday, as the Deseret News previously reported.
A variety of individuals and businesses have expressed interest in purchasing TikTok to prevent the app from potentially getting banned.
Here are some of the individual and businesses that have expressed interest in purchasing TikTok:
- Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and other companies, is being considered by ByteDance as a potential buyer for the app, reported Bloomberg.
- Kevin O’Leary, entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” personality, partnered with Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt to make a bid to purchase the app, per New York Post.
- Bobby Kotick, former Activation Blizzard CEO, showed interest in purchasing the app with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others, per The Wall Street Journal. Kotick has not made a formal statement about the offer.
- Microsoft, made several offers to purchase TikTok from ByteDance in 2020. A deal between the companies almost closed before falling apart, according to Forbes.