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.

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.

“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.  

Microsoft, the biggest investor in OpenAI and its principal cloud partner, is losing its designation as exclusive provider of computing capacity for the artificial intelligence startup.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Microsoft said that it’s still in a favorable position with OpenAI. Going forward, when OpenAI seeks additional capacity, Microsoft will have the “right of first refusal” before OpenAI checks with other parties.

The change in their relationship was disclosed as part of President Donald Trump’s announcement of the Stargate Project, a joint venture with OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank to invest billions of dollars in AI infrastructure in the U.S. Executives from those companies committed to invest an initial $100 billion and up to $500 billion over the next four years in the project, which will be set up as a separate company.

Oracle is a “key initial technology partner” alongside Arm, Microsoft and Nvidia in setting up data center infrastructure, OpenAI said in a blog post.

“The data centers are actually under construction,” Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said at a press conference at the White House, alongside Trump. “The first of them are under construction in Texas. Each building is a half a million square feet. There are 10 buildings currently being built, but that will expand to 20 and other locations beyond the Abilene location, which is, which is our first location.”

Oracle shares jumped 7% on Tuesday.

In 2019, three years before the launch of ChatGPT, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, which committed to moving its services to Azure. As OpenAI’s computing needs expanded, Microsoft signed contracts with third-party cloud providers, such as CoreWeave, to supplement its Azure cloud infrastructure.

Oracle entered the mix last year. The database software maker, which trails Amazon, Microsoft and Google in the cloud market, said in June that Microsoft’s Azure AI platform would be extended to Oracle’s cloud.

OpenAI said on Tuesday that it will continue to increase consumption of Azure, and Microsoft said OpenAI recently made “a new, large Azure commitment” for products and model training. Microsoft still has rights to OpenAI’s intellectual property, which can go in products such as Copilot. And it still has the exclusive on supplying computing requests for OpenAI’s application programming interface.

But the relationship has shown signs of strain, and Microsoft named OpenAI as a competitor in July. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s big ambitions on a podcast with investors Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley that was released in December.

“What he wants to do, I have to accommodate for, so that he can do what he does,” Nadella said. “And he needs to accommodate for the discipline that we need on our end, given the overall constraints that we may have.”

WATCH: President Trump speaks on AI infrastructure investment

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he’d consider the possibility of Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison purchasing TikTok.

At a press briefing to announce a joint venture for investing in artificial intelligence infrastructure, Trump was asked by a reporter if he was open to “Elon buying TikTok.”

“I would be if he wanted to buy it, yes,” Trump said in response. “I’d like Larry to buy it, too.”

TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, is in a state of limbo in the U.S. after Trump signed an executive order on Monday to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. for 75 days. That order aims to suspend a ban that went into effect after the Supreme Court last week upheld the validity of a national security law that would penalize app stores and service providers for hosting TikTok unless ByteDance sold it.

Analysts have valued TikTok’s U.S. business at about $50 billion.

Trump said on Tuesday that TikTok would be “worthless” without a permit to operate in the U.S., but could be worth $1 trillion with one.

Musk, who is also CEO of SpaceX and owner of social media app X, was one of Trump’s top financial backers in the campaign and is positioned to wield major influence in the administration. Ellison is a longtime Trump supporter, and Oracle is TikTok’s cloud infrastructure provider in the U.S.

“What I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, buy it and give half to the United States of America,” Trump said. “And we’ll give you the permit.'”

Trump said ByteDance would have “the ultimate partner” in the U.S. which would “make it very worthwhile for them in terms of the permits and everything else.”

Trump’s views on TikTok have shifted radically since his first term. In 2020, Trump signed an executive order to ban the app. A federal court viewed his effort as “arbitrary and capricious,” and blocked him. He began to speak more favorably of TikTok after he met in February with billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, a major ByteDance investor who also owns a stake in the owner of Truth Social, Trump’s social media app.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew attended Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., on Monday.

ByteDance has not indicated whether it will sell TikTok, but the Chinese government has reportedly considered a plan that would involve Musk acquiring the operations.

Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Oracle and TikTok representatives also didn’t provide an immediate comment.

WATCH: President Trump speaks on AI infrastructure investment