By Dawn Chmielewski
(Reuters) – Frank McCourt announced on Monday that Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and a venture capitalist, has joined his bid to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations as a strategic adviser specializing in social media.
Ohanian was an internet pioneer who founded Reddit with his roommate from the University of Virginia. He sold it to Conde Nast in 2006, then returned in 2014 as executive chair to lead a turnaround. He also has invested in a number of tech companies, including Instacart, Patreon and OpenSea.
“He has that broad portfolio of experience … of where social media was and, I think, a keen understanding of where it’s evolving,” said McCourt.
McCourt said Ohanian will help promote the Project Liberty bid to buy the U.S. assets of TikTok, which he calls “The People’s Bid,” because of plans to run the app on technology that lets users control how their data will be used and shared.
“Where he can help mostly is validating but also socializing what we’re doing,” said McCourt. “On the one hand, this is a project which has very sophisticated technology at the core, and so you’re dealing with a very specific audience when it comes to demonstrating the validity of that technology and in how it works, and why it’s necessary.”
“And then you have a totally different constituency, which is basically non-technologists, who are impacted by this technology more than they realize,” McCourt said.
Ohanian said he was excited to work on the project and give people more control over their data.
The former Los Angeles Dodgers owner and his partners submitted a bid for TikTok in early January, as a deadline approached that would require ByteDance to sell the app to a U.S. owner or face a ban.
The app briefly shut down in the U.S. hours before the ban was slated to take effect on Jan. 19, then began restoring service after President-elect Donald Trump said he would revive the app’s access.
Trump granted a 75-day delay in enforcing the ban and asked Vice President JD Vance to oversee the sale process.
The prospect of gaining ownership over one of the world’s most recognized video-sharing platforms, or at least its U.S. audience, has drawn an increasingly long list of people and entities ranging from the world of finance, technology and entertainment.
Other bidders include a group of investors led by tech entrepreneur Jesse Tinsley, which includes the YouTube personality MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, and Wyoming entrepreneur Reid Rasner.
McCourt said he has sent extensive information about his TikTok bid to the White House, including details about his financing, his approach to the technology and how his bid satisfies national security issues.
TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, is only “lightly” engaged, said McCourt. It has not retained a banker, nor defined a set of assets to be sold — let alone set a valuation, he said. He said there is a possibility that ByteDance elects to shut down the popular short-video app used by half of America’s population, rather than sell it.
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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