Ex-Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby Kotick, is a man whom many at his former workplace were not sad to see go and even then, that is putting it mildly. Now, the controversial figure has found himself in the spotlight again, after news surfaced that he has expressed interest in purchasing TikTok.
According to WSJ, Kotick has reportedly expressed interest in purchasing Bytedance’s social media app, but at the potential cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, the man is also looking for partners that are willing to take the plunge with him. To that end, it is also reported that he had considered asking Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who himself was subject to a weird yet interesting series of events last year.
TikTok itself is currently in a unique if not interesting situation in the US: its China-based parent company, Bytedance, has been under the scalpel of US lawmakers for a while now, the latter believing that the social media app is allegedly being used by the Chinese government as a means to collect data on people outside of the China, or that it could serve as a propaganda tool for the country’s ruling Communist government.
Right now, Bytedance has been given an ultimatum: “Divest itself”, a fancy way of telling the TikTok owner to sell the platform in the US or get banned altogether. This eventually led to many interested parties in the US who see a potential in owning the social media app, along with the financial benefits it could yield for them. Of course, Kotick is one of the many new potential buyers.
