TikTok ban: Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary wants to buy Chinese-owned app, sets up crowdfunding campaign

Kevin O’Leary has put himself on the notably short list of people who say they want to buy TikTok – and he is making it a group effort.

The Shark Tank investor said on Tuesday that he set up a crowdfunding website to gauge interest in collectively buying the social media platform. The site allows anyone to “reserve” spots to become investors in the potential US version of TikTok. It’s not accepting any payments yet, and reservations are only a way to indicate interest.

If the crowdfunding campaign kicks off, it would be subject to US rules that limit investors to people who earn over US$200,000 or have specific finance qualifications.

“I’d like to democratise TikTok and turn it into a platform where the user data is protected from the prying eyes of foreign adversaries,” O’Leary said in a video he posted on Instagram.

The announcement follows a decision by US lawmakers last month to ban Chinese-owned TikTok from US app stores unless it is sold in less than a year. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, sued the federal government over the ban earlier this month. TikTok has already said it has no plans to sell the platform.

O’Leary, a Canadian investor, first raised his hand to buy the platform in March, saying that TikTok is “not going to get banned because I’m gonna buy it.” He said that he didn’t think Google or Meta would be able to purchase it because of antitrust concerns. The same month, he said his starting bid would be US$20 billion to US$30 billion – a 90 per cent cut in valuation based on the company’s last funding round.