Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is forming an investor group to acquire ByteDance’s TikTok as bipartisan legislation moving through Congress threatens its continued existence in the US.
The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a bipartisan bill that, if signed into law, would force ByteDance to either sell off its top global app or face an effective ban on TikTok in the US.
“I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin, head of Liberty Strategic Capital, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday. “It’s a great business and I’m going to build a team to buy TikTok.”
There is common ground between Liberty and ByteDance. Masa Son’s SoftBank Vision Fund invested in ByteDance in 2018 and is also a limited partner in Mnuchin’s Liberty Strategic.
The bill now heads to the Senate, where its future is uncertain, although President Joe Biden has said he will sign the legislation if it reaches his desk.
“This should be owned by American businesses. There is no way the Chinese would ever let an American company own something like this in China,” Mnuchin said.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have pointed to TikTok’s reach in the U.S. — according to its own estimates, 170 million Americans use the app — as giving the Chinese government direct access and influence in the U.S.
Major tech investors, including Peter Thiel, Vinod Khosla and Keith Rabois, have publicly or privately decried the social media platform as a destructive influence.
However, it remains unclear whether the Chinese government would allow ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US buyer. TikTok lashed out at the bill, including a concerted campaign across its user base and via videos on its platform.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has hinted that a sale is not an option. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin described the bipartisan push as indicative of “bandit logic” toward TikTok, Financial Times mentionted Thursday.
ByteDance was valued at $220 billion in its latest funding round in 2023, according to data from PitchBook. While a discrete valuation for TikTok was not immediately clear, any sale price for the US division would likely be less.
TikTok’s most valuable asset and, for lawmakers, its most troubling weapon, is its algorithm, which provides tailored content to users and developed in China. Any sale of TikTok without the algorithm would be significantly less attractive to potential buyers.
Mnuchin did not specify who the other investors in such a deal would be or the potential valuation for the social networking site.
There are other interested buyers. The Wall Street Journal mentionted On Sunday former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick was shopping around a potential deal with prospective partners.
Last week, Mnuchin’s Liberty Strategic Capital was a lead investor in a $1 billion capital raising to stabilize New York Community Bancorp.
Mnuchin served as Treasury Secretary under former President Donald Trump. That administration also took a competitive stance toward TikTok, which ultimately resulted in ByteDance forming a data partnership with Oracle. Trump has since reversed course and opposes banning TikTok.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.