Technology

Kevin O’Leary says he would ‘love to do a TikTok deal,’ but the law prevents it

Published

10 months ago

January 22, 2025

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Kevin O’Leary is seen in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on May 28, 2024.

James Devaney | Gc Images | Getty Images

Canadian investor Kevin O’Leary is still interested in a TikTok deal, but it’s not possible under current law, he told CNBC, as President Donald Trump extended the deadline for a ban on the social media platform.

As part of a wave of executive orders on Monday, Trump delayed by 75 days the imposition of a law that would effectively ban TikTok in the U.S., allowing for “an opportunity to determine the appropriate course of action.”

Trump had promised the move in a social media post on Sunday, also floating a deal that would see the platform stay active under a joint venture with 50% American ownership.

“That 50/50 deal, I would love to work with Trump on, so would every other potential buyer … But the problem with some of these ideas is they are inconsistent with the ruling of the Supreme Court,” said O’Leary, widely known from his role in ABC’s “Shark Tank.”

The investor announced that he, along with “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” an effort led by Project Liberty Founder Frank McCourt, had offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash to buy TikTok in an appearance on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”

Speaking to CNBC, he said the proposed deal did not include ByteDance’s TikTok algorithm, which has been a key point of scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers, adding that his group had its own alternative.

TikTok temporarily temporarily went dark in the the U.S. after the Supreme Court upheld the law Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, or PAFACA.

McCourt confirmed to CNBC that the Project Liberty team remained “ready to work collaboratively with the Trump Administration, ByteDance, and a consortium of American partners” to finalize a deal and keep TikTok online.

“Project Liberty has a proven tech stack that is already in use and offers a clear path to address the national security concerns of Congress while keeping TikTok operational,” he added.

Legal hurdles

Firms involved with TikTok have had differing reactions to Trump’s executive order. Service providers such as Oracle and Akamai have willingly kept TikTok online, while Apple and Google are yet to restore ByteDance-owned apps on their stores.

According to O’Leary, while Trump’s ban extension has likely lent protection to the likes of Oracle and Akamai, it’s unclear if ByteDance’s deadline to divest will be extended.

“What we need is not really a 75 day extension. What we need is to go back and ask congress to open the order and provide for these new options, because they’re not provided for right now,” he said.

“I would love to do a deal, if the law provided for it, but I don’t have the luxury of breaching the order of the Congress,” he added.

Bill Ford on TikTok: We can find a workable solution that keeps Chinese & U.S. leadership satisfied

Law experts who spoke to CNBC agreed that the legal status of TikTok and Trump’s executive order remained uncertain and that any efforts to make a TikTok deal could face challenges.

“The Order does not appear to comply with the statute. Congress carefully included certain dates and procedures in the law, which SCOTUS found to be constitutional,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.

“Thus, a federal court could find that the Order violates the law and invalidate it,” he said, noting, however, that such an action could take a long time if the government appealed to SCOTUS.

Sarah Kreps, Director at the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, agreed the executive order was not consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision, adding that it said nothing about progress toward a qualified divestiture.

Given that violators of the TikTok law could face billions in fines, it’s not entirely prudent for parties to take Trump’s assurances over the law and SCOTUS’s ruling, Kreps said.

“They’re certainly gambling with the law and putting considerable faith in executive authority,” she added.

China softens stance?

O’Leary told CNBC that TikTok could fetch $20-$30 billion on the market in March last year, a huge discount, given any sale would likely exclude the platform’s algorithms.

Instead, the value in a potential deal was the opportunity to gain the strong domestic brand of TikTok and its over 100 million users, he said.

Still, around the time conversations about a TikTok sale ramped up, Beijing was seen as a major barrier to a BytdeDance divestment.

China, however, recently signaled openness to a deal that would see U.S. companies gain ownership of the platform.

Kevin O'Leary says bidding for TikTok will probably start at $20-30 billion

“When it comes to actions such as the operation and acquisition of businesses, we believe they should be independently decided by companies in accordance with market principles,” a Beijing spokesperson told reporters Monday when asked about President Donald Trump’s proposal.

According to O’Leary, any potential sale of ByteDance is still expected to be negotiated between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“With TikTok, I have the right to either sell it or close it, and we’ll make that determination and we may have to get an approval from China too,” Trump told reporters following his inauguration.

While signing the executive order, the President reportedly suggested that he could impose tariffs on China if Beijing failed to approve a U.S. deal with TikTok. On Monday stateside, he said he would consider the likelihood of Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison buying TikTok.

Meanwhile, O’Leary told CNBC that he was in Washington still working on a potential TikTok deal with U.S. lawmakers.

Technology

CNBC Daily Open: Some hope after last week’s U.S. market rout

Published

2 hours ago

November 24, 2025

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CNBC Daily Open: Some hope after last week's U.S. market rout

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Nov. 21, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Last week on Wall Street, two forces dragged stocks lower: a set of high-stakes numbers from Nvidia and the U.S. jobs report that landed with more heat than expected. But the leaves that remained after hot tea scalded investors seemed to augur good tidings.

Even though Nvidia’s third-quarter results easily breezed past Wall Street’s estimates, they couldn’t quell worries about lofty valuations and an unsustainable bubble inflating in the artificial intelligence sector. The “Magnificent Seven” cohort — save Alphabet — had a losing week.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics added to the pressure. September payrolls rose far more than economists expected, prompting investors to pare back their bets of a December interest rate cut. The timing didn’t help matters, as the report had been delayed and hit just as markets were already on edge.

By Friday’s close, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average lost roughly 2% for the week, while the Nasdaq Composite tumbled 2.7%.

Still, a flicker of hope appeared on the horizon.

On Friday, New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said that he sees “room” for the central bank to lower interest rates, describing current policy as “modestly restrictive.” His comments caused traders to increase their bets on a December cut to around 70%, up from 44.4% a week ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

And despite a broad sell-off in AI stocks last week, Alphabet shares bucked the trend. Investors seemed impressed by its new AI model, Gemini 3, and hopeful that its development of custom chips could rival Nvidia’s in the long run.

Meanwhile, Eli Lilly’s ascent into the $1 trillion valuation club served as a reminder that market leadership doesn’t belong to tech alone. In a market defined by narrow concentration, any sign of broadening strength is a welcome change.

Diversification, even within AI’s sprawling ecosystem, might be exactly what this market needs now.

What you need to know today

And finally…

The Beijing music venue DDC was one of the latest to have to cancel a performance by a Japanese artist on Nov. 20, 2025, in the wake of escalating bilateral tensions.

Screenshot

Japanese concerts in China are getting abruptly canceled as tensions simmer

China’s escalating dispute with Japan reinforces Beijing’s growing economic influence — and penchant for abrupt actions that can create uncertainty for businesses.

Hours before Japanese jazz quintet The Blend was due to perform in Beijing on Thursday, a plainclothesman walked into the DDC music club during a sound check. Then, “the owner of the live house came to me and said: ‘The police has told me tonight is canceled,'” said Christian Petersen-Clausen, a music agent.

— Evelyn Cheng

Correction: This report has been updated to correct the spelling of Eli Lilly.

Technology

Meta halted internal research suggesting social media harm, court filing alleges

Published

2 hours ago

November 24, 2025

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Meta halted internal research suggesting social media harm, court filing alleges

Meta halted internal research that purportedly showed that people who stopped using Facebook became less depressed and anxious, according to a legal filing that was released on Friday.

The social media giant was alleged to have initiated the study, dubbed Project Mercury, in late 2019 as a way to help it “explore the impact that our apps have on polarization, news consumption, well-being, and daily social interactions,” according to the legal brief, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

The filing contains newly unredacted information pertaining to Meta.

The newly released legal brief is related to high-profile multidistrict litigation from a variety of plaintiffs, such as school districts, parents and state attorneys general against social media companies like Meta, Google’s YouTube, Snap and TikTok.

The plaintiffs claim that these businesses were aware that their respective platforms caused various mental health-related harms to children and young adults, but failed to take action and instead misled educators and authorities, among several allegations.

“We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens—like introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with controls to manage their teens’ experiences.”

A Google spokesperson said in a statement that “These lawsuits fundamentally misunderstand how YouTube works and the allegations are simply not true.”

“YouTube is a streaming service where people come to watch everything from live sports to podcasts to their favorite creators, primarily on TV screens, not a social network where people go to catch up with friends,” the Google spokesperson said. “We’ve also developed dedicated tools for young people, guided by child safety experts, that give families control.”

Snap and TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The 2019 Meta research was based on a random sample of consumers who stopped their Facebook and Instagram usage for a month, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit alleged that Meta was disappointed that the initial tests of the study showed that people who stopped using Facebook “for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison.”

Meta allegedly chose not to “sound the alarm,” but instead stopped the research, the lawsuit said.

“The company never publicly disclosed the results of its deactivation study,” according to the suit. “Instead, Meta lied to Congress about what it knew.”

The lawsuit cites an unnamed Meta employee who allegedly said, “If the results are bad and we don’t publish and they leak, is it going to look like tobacco companies doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves?”

Stone, in a series of social media posts, pushed back on the lawsuit’s implication that Meta shuttered the internal research after it allegedly showed a causal relationship between its apps and adverse mental-health effects.

Stone characterized the 2019 study as flawed and said it was the reason that the company expressed disappointment. The study, Stone said, merely found that “people who believed using Facebook was bad for them felt better when they stopped using it.”

“This is a confirmation of other public research (“deactivation studies”) out there that demonstrates the same effect,” Stone said in a separate post. “It makes intuitive sense but it doesn’t show anything about the actual effect of using the platform.”

CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed reporting.

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