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TikTok has another potential suitor: former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Mnuchin tells CNBC that he backs pending legislation that would ban TikTok from the US unless its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, sells TikTok to a US-based company or organization. And he wants to be among those to profit from the popular app.
"I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold," Mnuchin said. "It's a great business and I'm going to put together a group to buy TikTok."
He adds that TikTok "should be owned by US businesses" and that there's "no way that the Chinese would ever let a US company own something like this in China."
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act passed the House this week by a vote of 352 to 65, though it faces challenges in the Senate. The White House says President Biden supports it.
Mnuchin served as Treasury Secretary under Donald Trump, who signed an executive order that did much of what's included in the pending legislation. (Trump now says he doesn't support it because it would benefit Meta too much.) That effort eventually stalled, however. Biden eventually rescinded Trump's executive order and tasked his administration with preparing recommendations on preventing a foreign adversary, like China, from seizing consumer data from an app such as TikTok or WeChat.
Mnuchin isn't the only businessman interested in buying TikTok. The Wall Street Journal reports that Bobby Kotick, former chief executive of Activision, is also in the mix. Kotick floated the idea at a dinner during an Allen & Co. conference last week to a group of potential partners that included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Mnuchin did not reveal any potential investors.