MrBeast, the popular YouTuber, is reportedly part of a consortium aiming to acquire TikTok for over $20 billion. Bloomberg reports that this group, including MrBeast, Jesse Tinsley (founder of Employer.com), Roblox co-founder and CEO David Baszucki, and Nathan McCauley (head of Anchorage Digital), believes a successful bid will require $25 billion. While TikTok's owner, ByteDance, has stated its U.S. operations are not for sale, and the Tinsley-led group hasn't received a direct response, MrBeast has indicated his involvement.

MrBeast's representatives confirmed his engagement with multiple parties, expressing a desire to join the leading bidder, suggesting potential shifts in alliances. He tweeted on January 22nd, "The leading groups who are all credible bidding on Tik Tok have reached out for us to help them, I’m excited to partner/make this a reality. Big things cooking."

Earlier this week, former President Trump mentioned Microsoft's purported negotiations to acquire TikTok, anticipating a bidding war. Microsoft hasn't verified this claim.

TikTok, briefly unavailable to its 170 million U.S. users, was temporarily offline before a January 19th deadline requiring ByteDance to sell or face a ban. This outage followed the Supreme Court's rejection of TikTok's First Amendment challenge. The court acknowledged common data practices but cited TikTok's scale, vulnerability to foreign control, and sensitive data collection as justification for addressing national security concerns. Service resumed after assurances from President Trump that penalties would be avoided. TikTok stated this was a victory for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship, promising collaboration with President Trump on a long-term solution.

Following his inauguration on January 20th, President Trump signed an executive order delaying enforcement of the law by 75 days. He's reportedly in discussions with various entities regarding a potential TikTok buyout, including Elon Musk.