Google and YouTube will donate $15 million to support the Los Angeles community and content creators impacted by wildfires, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced in a blog post Wednesday.

The contributions will flow to local relief organizations including Emergency Network Los Angeles, the American Red Cross, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and the Institute for Nonprofit News, the blog said. When the company’s LA offices can safely reopen, impacted creators will also be able to use YouTube’s production facilities “to recover and rebuild their businesses” as well as access community events.

“To all of our employees, the YouTube creator community, and everyone in LA, please stay safe and know we’re here to support,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted on X.

The move comes days before Sunday’s impending TikTok ban that has already seen content creators begin asking fans to follow them on other social platforms. YouTube Shorts, a short-form video platform within YouTube, is a competitor to TikTok, along with Meta’s Instagram Reels and the fast-growing Chinese app Rednote, otherwise known as Xiahongshu.

“In moments like these, we see the power of communities coming together to support each other — and the strength and resilience of the YouTube community is like no other,” Mohan wrote.

YouTube’s contributions are in line with a host of other LA companies pledging multi-million dollar donations aimed at assisting employees and residents impacted by the LA fires. Meta announced a $4 million donation split between CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the company while both Netflix and Comcast pledged $10 million donations to multiple aid groups.

Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.

WATCH: TikTok: What creators would do if the short-form video app goes dark

Business moguls such as Elon Musk should be prepared to spend tens of billions of dollars for TikTok’s U.S. operations should parent company ByteDance decide to sell. 

TikTok is staring at a potential ban in the U.S. if the Supreme Court decides to uphold a national security law in which service providers such as Apple and Google would be penalized for hosting the app after the Sunday deadline. ByteDance has not indicated that it will sell the app’s U.S. unit, but the Chinese government has considered a plan in which X owner Musk would acquire the operations, as part of several scenarios in consideration, Bloomberg News reported Monday.

If ByteDance decides to sell, potential buyers may have to spend between $40 billion and $50 billion. That’s the valuation that CFRA Research Senior Vice President Angelo Zino has estimated for TikTok’s U.S. operations. Zino based his valuation on estimates of TikTok’s U.S. user base and revenue in comparison to rival apps. 

TikTok has about 115 million monthly mobile users in the U.S., which is slightly behind Instagram’s 131 million, according to an estimate by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. That puts TikTok ahead of Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit, which have U.S. monthly mobile user bases of 96 million, 74 million and 32 million, according to Sensor Tower.

Zino’s estimate, however, is down from the more than $60 billion that he estimated for the unit in March 2024, when the House passed the initial national security bill that President Joe Biden signed into law the following month.

The lowered estimate is due to TikTok’s current geopolitical predicament and because “industry multiples have come in a bit” since March, Zino told CNBC in an email. Zino’s estimate doesn’t include TikTok’s valuable recommendation algorithms, which a U.S. acquirer would not obtain as part of a deal, with the algorithms and their alleged ties to China being central to the U.S. government’s case that TikTok poses a national security threat.

Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence have their estimate for TikTok’s U.S. operations pegged in the range of $30 billion to $35 billion. That’s the estimate they published in July, saying at the time that the value of the unit would be “discounted due to it being a forced sale.”  

Bloomberg Intelligence analysts noted that finding a buyer for TikTok’s U.S. operations that can both afford the transaction and deal with the accompanying regulatory scrutiny on data privacy makes a sale challenging. It could also make it difficult for a buyer to expand TikTok’s ads business, they wrote. 

A consortium of businesspeople including billionaire Frank McCourt and O’Leary Ventures Chairman Kevin O’Leary put in a bid to buy TikTok from ByteDance. O’Leary has previously said the group would be willing to pay up to $20 billion to acquire the U.S. assets without the algorithm.

Unlike a Musk bid, O’Leary’s group’s bid would be free from regulatory scrutiny, O’Leary said in a Monday interview with Fox News.

O’Leary said that he’s “a huge Elon Musk fan,” but added “the idea that the regulator, even under Trump’s administration, would allow this is pretty slim.”

TikTok, X and O’Leary Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.

Watch: Chinese TikTok alternative surges

Bitcoin extended its rebound on Wednesday, hovering just below $100,000 after another encouraging inflation report fueled investors’ risk appetite.

The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by more than 3% at $99,444.43, bringing its 2-day gain to about 7%, according to Coin Metrics.

The CoinDesk 20 index, which measures the broader market of cryptocurrencies, gained 6%.

Shares of Coinbase gained 6%. Bitcoin proxies MicroStrategy and Mara Holdings each gained about 4%.

Wednesday’s move followed the release of the December consumer price index, which showed core inflation unexpectedly slowed in December. A day earlier, the market got another bright inflation reading in the producer price index, which showed wholesale prices rose less in December than expected.

The post-election crypto rally fizzled into the end of 2024 after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sounded an inflation warning on Dec. 18, and bitcoin suffered even steeper losses last week as a spike in bond yields prompted investors to dump growth-oriented risk assets. This Monday, bitcoin briefly dipped below $90,000.

The price of bitcoin has been taking its cue from the equities market in recent weeks, thanks in part to the popularity of bitcoin ETFs, which have led to the institutionalization of the asset. Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500 has climbed in the past week, while its correlation with gold has dropped sharply since the end of December.