Kevin O’Leary, investor from Shark Tank fame, told Fox News he and former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, 71, have teamed up with others to raise funds to purchase TikTok’s U.S. assets before the Chinese social media giant is banned.
O’Leary, a Montreal native who lives in Miami Beach and is an ally of Trump, says he is part of a “multi-billion-dollar deal”—one that is critical for Americans who hope to use TikTok beyond the proposed ban date of January 20, when TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, must sell off its U.S. assets to an American or American company.
O’Leary is worth an estimated $400 million and McCourt is worth an estimated $1.4 billion.
Frank McCourt launched in 2021 Project Liberty, which is a partly for-profit company and a non-profit institute, to develop infrastructure for a safer and more secure social media. A diverse set of stakeholders had been reported in early December to have committed to at least $20 billion for the bid.
McCourt says that Project Liberty “is uniquely positioned to assume stewardship of TikTok” because of the tech and governance protocols it has built to prioritize user privacy and safety.
Kevin O’Leary met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago recently and told Fox News on Monday they discussed the TikTok deal, as well as Trump’s meeting with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.
O’Leary said he told Trump his meetings with Trudeau were a “complete waste of time” in a quest to merge Canada with the U.S., which O’Leary supported.
“What this could be is the beginning of an economic union,” the businessman said last month. “Think about the power of combining two economies, erasing the border between Canada and the United States and putting all that resource up to the northern borders where China and Russia are knocking on the doors. Give a common currency, figure out taxes across the board, get everything trading both ways.”
