With the U.S. about to get a new-old president, all eyes are on the video-sharing platform TikTok. The Biden administration has been going to great lengths to ban the app in the U.S. unless its parent company sells it off. Well, Activision’s former CEO is looking to buy TikTok, but he’s got to wait a bit.
To catch you up, the U.S. government has moved to ban TikTok from U.S. phones due to the company’s ties with China. It’s been a long and tough legal battle, and a new law sees ByteDance, TikTok’s owner with an ultimatum. It will either have to sell TikTok or pull it from the U.S. The government hopes to make a decision before January 19th when President-elect Donald Trump retakes office.
Earlier this year, Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard expressed his ambition to buy TikTok. That’s a pretty massive investment. If you think that the $44 billion Elon Musk paid for Twitter was massive, TikTok was valued at $84 billion last year.
Activision’s CEO wants to buy TikTok, but he has to play the waiting game
Right now, TikTok’s fate lies in the balance. The Biden Administration is rushing to pass the law to ban TikTok, but the Trump administration wants to block it. So, this will be a pretty hectic month as the U.S. swaps over.
Bobby Kotick wants to buy the platform, he’s going to have to wait for the winds to die down before writing an $84 billion check. In fact, he’s waiting until Trump takes office again before moving to purchase it. This makes sense, as buying it while banned in the States could have a major impact going forward. It’ll be like buying a chain restaurant and having half of its locations close instantly.
Kotick has ties with China and ByteDance’s founder Zhang Yiming, so it seems likely that, if the company does sell, Kotick may get top billing. However, there’s no telling if ByteDance will even sell. Just like Kotik, ByteDance is also waiting for the presidential shift. There’s a chance that it won’t need to make any changes.
