By Krystal Hu
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – U.S. businessman Frank McCourt is open to teaming up with other buyers in a bid to take over TikTok’s U.S. operations as long as he can retain control of the assets, he told Reuters at an event in Davos on Thursday.
The billionaire declined to share details of his funding sources, but said private equity firms and family offices have provided opportunities.
“Capital is not the issue here. This is about waiting for (TikTok parent) ByteDance or the Chinese government to make a decision about the future of US TikTok,” said McCourt, speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The flexibility in its much-publicized offer came shortly after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday delaying the implementation of a ban on the popular Chinese-owned short video app for 75 days.
Trump also said this week that he would “like the United States to have a 50% joint venture ownership position” in TikTok and that he was open to billionaires Elon Musk or Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle (NYSE: ), buying the social media app.
McCourt’s advocacy group Project Liberty submitted an offer to buy TikTok’s US assets in early January with plans to launch the app on the group’s technology, which aims to let users choose how their data is used and shared. TikTok filed a lawsuit to block the US ban, but the Supreme Court upheld it in a ruling last week.
Existing investors in TikTok have shown support by expressing interest in transferring part or all of the stake in the business, according to McCourt, potentially reducing the capital needed to execute a purchase that could cost $20 billion without involving TikTok’s algorithm.
In a meeting with the US House Select Committee on China earlier this week, McCourt and his co-sponsor Kevin O’Leary were assured that lawmakers on both sides of the US political spectrum are committed to securing qualified divestment.
“I came away with a very clear impression that the (US) Congress is pretty singular in enforcing the law and challenging either the ban or the sale of American TikTok,” McCourt said.
For McCourt, who said he has never used TikTok, the app’s most attractive assets are its users, data and brand. Its offer for TikTok does not include buying the algorithm for TikTok’s recommendation system, which is at the heart of the app’s popularity.
It wants to move TikTok’s 170 million US users to its own Project Liberty platform with digital infrastructure in the US and expects the migration could be completed within a year if a deal is struck.
McCourt said he is flexible on the ownership’s financial arrangements as long as he can retain control and move TikTok users to the digital infrastructure developed by Project Liberty.
“It’s not just about who’s going to pay the most money,” he said. “This is about who can meet the very strict criteria set out in the law and reaffirmed by the Supreme Court.”
(This story has been corrected to change the name to Larry Ellison, not Larry Page, in paragraph 5)
