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MrBeast is joining a consortium of investors in submitting an all-cash bid to acquire TikTok’s US operations before President Trump’s 75-day extension on the app’s ban ends.
The Big Picture: The race is on to see who will land the most coveted social media platform in the world (if China really does allow a sale). Whoever can curry the most favor with Trump could end up being the victor.
Behind the Offer: After conquering YouTube, MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) has set his sights on TikTok.
- MrBeast joined a group of American “institutional investors and high net worth individuals” — led by billionaire Employer.com founder Jesse Tinsley — in submitting an undisclosed all-cash bid for TikTok.
- The group says it’s “ready to structure the deal in whatever way President Trump and our government wish.”
- That’s a key point since Trump has signaled he wants the US government to potentially take a 50% stake in the platform to get a “permit” to operate in the US.
The Future: Tinsley, Donaldson, and co. already have quite a bit of competition. Former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary have made a bid (with or without TikTok’s famous algorithm) and talked with the President about it. AI search startup Perplexity has also submitted an offer. And Trump himself said he’d be happy if Elon Musk or Oracle founder Larry Ellison tried to acquire the platform.
But Trump may have already given ByteDance the upper hand in any dealmaking after stating that if TikTok were allowed to stay in the US, it’d be worth “like a trillion dollars.” We joke, but you never know.
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