Apparently, the former head of Activision Blizzard wants to buy the TikTok service. This is about millions of users and a lot of money.
According to The Wall Street Journal, former CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, wants to buy the video service TikTok. At the end of December 2023, Kotick left Activision Blizzard.
One of the reasons for this action is that a bill could ban TikTok in the United States. This could force TikTok’s owner, the Chinese technology company ByteDance, to sell the service. At least then, if the service is to continue being used in the USA.
TikTok could be banned in the USA, Kotick wants to buy the service because of this
What kind of ban is this? Recently, legislation was passed in the House of Representatives in the USA that could ban TikTok. The USA fears that the Chinese government could gain too much influence over the users. This is reported by the New York Times.
What does this have to do with Kotick? According to US media, the entrepreneur is looking for partners to help him buy the company. Reports indicate that he “proposed the idea of a partnership to buy TikTok to a group of people, including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.”
The company of ChatGPT could also benefit from the deal: OpenAI could use TikTok to train its AI models if a partner like Kotick could raise the capital for such an acquisition.
After all, we’re talking about 170 million American users that TikTok could lose in the event of a ban in the USA. But the price could also be high: The Chinese technology company ByteDance is said to have a market value of 140 billion US dollars and is one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Is buying really an alternative? Yes, for the American government, this would be an alternative since then the law would no longer apply. For instance, Senator Lindsey Graham stated in a conversation, “Banning TikTok may be necessary to protect American data from China. But if a way can be found to avoid that, it would be good too.”
