Bobby Kotick, who left the post of CEO of Activision Blizzard in December 2023, is considering buying TikTok amid the threat of a ban on the social network in the United States. Sources of The Wall Street Journal claim that he has already contacted the executive director of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming, to "express interest."
According to The Wall Street Journal, Kotick is now looking for partners for a deal. Last week, he suggested the idea of jointly buying TikTok to a group of people, including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. How they reacted is unknown.
The Wall Street Journal suggests that the potential purchase of TikTok could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
In early March, lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled a bill "To protect Americans from applications controlled by foreign adversaries." If it is accepted, the Chinese company ByteDance will have to sell TikTok within 165 days, otherwise the social network will be banned in the United States. U.S. President Joe Biden has said he will sign the bill if it is approved in Congress.
Recall that in 2020, the US authorities already tried to force ByteDance to sell TikTok's American assets. In August of that year, the previous President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed a decree on the removal of the TikTok application from mobile stores in the country. TikTok was supposed to be able to continue operating in the US only if ByteDance sold the product. The buyer was supposed to be Oracle. However, after Biden came to power, Trump's decree was canceled, and the need for a deal disappeared.