Kevin O’Leary Reveals That He’s Offering Chinese Company $20 Billion in Cash for TikTok

Kevin O’Leary, the businessman of Shark Tank fame, revealed that he’s willing to pay $20 billion in cash for TikTok on Friday while reacting to the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to uphold a congressionally-imposed ban on the social media platform.

In an appearance on Fox News, O’Leary noted that service providers who defy the ban — which will go into effect on January 19 because TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, refused to sell it — are subject to enormous fines.

So as of right now, unless the company enters into an agreement to be purchased by an American syndicate — and Biden, who’s the executive right now, waives for 90 days — this thing goes dark at midnight because who’s going to take on a billion, seven risk at midnight? Who’s going to do that? What counsel would advise? This is the most interesting, complicated, crazy situation I’ve ever been involved in. I’m really excited about it,” said O’Leary.

He went on to weigh in on the merits of the case for banning TikTok:

Nobody knows the extent of which the algorithm provides data. It’s been highly speculated. But, you know, there’s a reason that Congress put this order in front of the Supreme Court, there’s a reason they ruled in favor of it. It’s not worth taking the risk. And so the obvious solution is to sell it to an American syndicate as per the order and then decide whether you’re going to rewrite the algorithm completely or fork the code, as it’s called in the software industry, which I don’t think many of the subcommittees are going to allow. We just don’t know.

“One last question,” followed up anchor Bill Hemmer. “What is the price tag to get the deal done?”

“Right now, $20 billion is on the table — cash, cash. 20 billion,” replied O’Leary.

“Will that do it?” asked Hemmer.

“Well, I don’t know,” answered O’Leary, who noted that the Supreme Court had reached its decision just minutes ago.

CNN reported earlier this month that a group led by O’Leary and Frank McCourt had already made an offer to ByteDance.

Watch above via Fox News.