YouTube star MrBeast joins bid to buy TikTok in US | TikTok

MrBeast, the YouTube star and highest-earning creator on the internet, has officially joined a bid to buy TikTok’s US operations.

The 26-year-old has teamed up with the tech entrepreneur Jesse Tinsley, the founder of the online HR company employer.com, to make an all-cash offer for the social video app’s American unit. The approach was announced as Donald Trump said he was open to the US tech billionaires Elon Musk and Larry Ellison buying TikTok in the US.

MrBeast – whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson – has floated his interest in acquiring TikTok in a number of social media posts, writing on X on 13 January: “I’ll buy TikTok so it doesn’t get banned.” In a subsequent TikTok post Donaldson said he had been talking to a “bunch of billionaires” about a bid.

The US law firm Paul Hastings announced the Donaldson bid in a statement on Tuesday. It said Tinsley was leading an investor group comprising “institutional investors and high-net worth individuals” but Donaldson was the only publicly named member of the group.

The statement did not reveal the size of the all-cash bid, although Trump put a value of $1tn (£811bn) on the app on Tuesday. According to Forbes, MrBeast, who has 346 million followers on YouTube, was the world’s most successful internet creator last year, earning $85m.

Paul Hastings added that the lawyer leading its team advising on the bid was Brad Bondi, the brother of Pam Bondi, Trump’s choice to be US attorney general.

The US president also floated a deal with Musk, the world’s richest person, or Ellison, the multibillionaire founder of Oracle and world’s fourth richest person. At a press conference on Tuesday, Trump said he was open to Musk making a bid, adding: “I would be, if he wanted to buy it. I’d like Larry [Ellison] to buy it too.”

Ellison, who was present at the press conference, said it sounded like a “good deal”. Trump said TikTok was worth $1tn with a “permit” to operate in the US, under 50% US ownership.

TikTok’s future in the US remains uncertain despite the app coming back online on Sunday after its Beijing based-owner, ByteDance, briefly shut down the service. TikTok was forced to act before a 19 January deadline for its Chinese parent to sell the app’s US unit or face a de facto ban.

However, it reinstated the app after receiving “assurance” from Trump, who then issued an executive order on Monday suspending enforcement of a law requiring TikTok’s sale. The law forbade companies such as Apple, Google or Oracle from distributing or maintaining the app – effectively stopping it from operating – if ByteDance had not completed a sale by 19 January.

Some Republican lawmakers have already questioned the legality of suspending the law, saying companies affected by the legislation must adhere to it and anyone who violates it faces “ruinous bankruptcy”. Reuters has reported that Apple and Google had not reinstated the app on their app stores by Tuesday.

TikTok, Google and Apple have been approached for comment.