By India McCarty
Will TikTok receive another extension as it works to avoid an American ban? SHARK TANK’s Kevin O’Leary doesn’t think so.
“We’re on our second 75-day extension,” O’Leary told Fox Business. “I speculate that there will not be a third.”
Earlier this month, President Trump granted TikTok another 75-day extension, giving the company more time to find a buyer and divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote he was “working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK” and that “tremendous progress” had been made.
However, O’Leary thinks anyone who purchases TikTok is facing an uphill battle. He told Fox Business that he doubts an S&P 500 company would want to pay the proposed fine of $5,000 per user if the ban ends up going through.
“Anyone who wants to buy this thing now faces rewriting the algorithm,” the SHARK TANK personality said, adding that the decision is in China’s President Xi Jinping’s hands and that he “hasn’t decided if he’s going to sell it or not.”
O’Leary has been in talks to buy TikTok in partnership with former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.
“Frank McCourt and I have been working on this for so long, we aren’t giving up,” O’Leary concluded.
Their group, called “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” plans to buy the app without its famous algorithm and build a new one, based on American-designed technology.
“By keeping the platform alive without relying on the current TikTok algorithm and avoiding a ban, millions of Americans can continue to enjoy the platform,” McCourt explained in a statement earlier this year. “We look forward to working with ByteDance, President-elect Trump, and the incoming administration to get this deal done.”
O’Leary echoed these comments in an X post, writing, “We want to eliminate the misconception that it can’t sell because no one will buy it without the algorithm. NOT true. We’ll buy it without the algorithm. We don’t need them. We’ll do it ourselves and make TikTok wonderful again.”
Related: SHARK TANK’s Kevin O’Leary Wants to Buy TikTok
Frank and I discovered we both have things the other needs. I want to work with him because he’s done far more work on the algorithm. We want to eliminate the misconception that it can’t sell because no one will buy it without the algorithm. NOT true. We’ll buy it without the… pic.twitter.com/Isg3hUHq5P
— Kevin O’Leary aka Mr. Wonderful (@kevinolearytv) January 9, 2025
Trump has been open about his administration’s work on coming to an agreement with China on the ownership of TikTok, explaining in his Truth Social post that the deal “requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed.”
“We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China,” he continued, adding, “We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark.’ We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the deal.”
Despite the attention that business experts and government officials are paying to the proposed TikTok ban, the popular app’s fate remains up in the air.
Read Next: Will TikTok Be Banned or Not? Trump Announces New Deadline — Again
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