In the United States, a bill has been discussed for several months now that would ban the TikTok service in the country. It is now going through Congress, and according to this project, the Chinese company ByteDance must abandon its TikTok service, or it will be completely banned in the country. If the project is adopted and reaches US President Joe Biden’s desk, he will sign it, which has already been officially confirmed.
Amid information about the possible blocking of TikTok, the name of Bobby Kotick, the former head of Activision Blizzard King, who left Microsoft Gaming at the end of last year after the completion of the publisher’s merger with the corporation, surfaced. Forbes reports that Bobby Kotick is now “testing the waters” on the issue of buying out TikTok from ByteDance in the United States. Such a potential deal is estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars, and Bobby Kotick will not be able to handle the amount alone (it was previously reported that he would receive about $400-600 million upon leaving Activision).
Forbes writes that Bobby Kotick is looking for additional investors who would be interested in buying TikTok from ByteDance in the United States. In particular, among the candidates is Sam Altman from OpenAI, who could fill TikTok with artificial intelligence technology. Kotik also approached ByteDance Chairman Zhang Yiming to express interest in the purchase.
It is worth saying that against the backdrop of the upcoming elections in the United States, TikTok is one of the stumbling blocks for Joe Biden and Donald Trump. While Biden speaks of his readiness to block the service in the country, Trump, on the contrary, opposes blocking.