Other potential buyers include the philanthropist Frank Mccourt ’s Project Liberty, which is raising capital to make a bid for TikTok in order to “rearchitect the platform” and protect user data. McCourt is a billionaire who previously owned the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. The project is supported by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

The countdown is on again for a US-based buyer to take on TikTok, as it faces a ban. Euronews Next takes a look at the contenders to take over the app. View on euronews

Content creator Jimmy Donaldson, known on the Internet as MrBeast, has made it clear he is interested in buying TikTok. Donaldson has the most subscribers of any user on YouTube— over 340 million—and boasts over 113 million TikTok followers.

"Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary has said that he, in collaboration with former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, would be interested in purchasing the app.YouTuber MrBeast also said in an X post on January 13,

I met with the owners of Tiktok, the big owners, it’s worthless if it doesn’t get a permit,” Trump said. “It’s worth like a trillion dollars.”

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would be supportive of the world's richest man and his close aide, Elon Musk, buying TikTok "if he wanted to". Trump was asked if he would be open to the billionaire founder of Tesla buying the short-video platform facing a nationwide ban in the US after the Supreme Court last week upheld a law requiring TikTok to sever ties with its Chinese parent ByteDance.

Donald Trump signed an executive order delaying the US ban on ByteDance's TikTok for 75 days, starting January 19.

United States President Donald Trump on Monday told reporters that Microsoft is in talks to acquire the video-sharing platform TikTok and that he would like to see a bidding war over the app.Microsoft denied to comment on this,