The push to get ByteDance to sell off its TikTok social network is reportedly gaining some interest from a well-known businessman. A new report from The Wall Street Journal claims that former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is trying to find some more financial partners in an effort to acquire TikTok.
Kotick departed Activision Blizzard in late 2023 after Microsoft acquired the game publisher. The WSJ report claims Kotick has discussed purchasing TikTok with ByteDance co-founder Zhang Yiming. He"s also reportedly looking for financial partners to help raise money for such a deal, which could end up costing hundreds of billions of dollars.
The story said he talked about such a prospect last week at a conference with a group of people that included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The theory is that if OpenAI joined an effort to buy the social network, it could use its data to help train its GPT AI models.
This activity comes just a few days after the 50 members of the US House of Representatives House Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously for a bill that, if it becomes law, would demand ByteDance sell off TikTok within 165 days of the law being passed. If this doesn"t happen, the TikTok app could be banned from US app stores.
The bill is expected to be voted on by the full House this week and then passed by the US Senate. If that happens, it would finally be signed into law by President Joe Biden, who has already indicated he will sign it if it reaches his desk.
Critics of TikTok claim that, since ByteDance is a China-owned company, it could be asked to send the data it has collected to the Chinese government. ByteDance has repeatedly denied it would do that and that the bill that passed through the House committee last week "has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States."
The WSJ story does say that some members of the US Senate have already expressed concern about this new bill and if it violates First Amendment rights to free speech. The bill would have to be passed by 60 of the 100 US Senators before it heads over for President Biden"s signature.