Frank McCourt introduced on Monday that Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and a enterprise capitalist, has joined his bid to amass TikTok’s US operations as a strategic adviser specializing in social media.
Ohanian was an web pioneer who based Reddit along with his roommate from the College of Virginia. He bought it to Conde Nast in 2006, then returned in 2014 as government chair to steer a turnaround. He additionally has invested in quite a few tech firms, together with Instacart, Patreon and OpenSea.
“He has that broad portfolio of expertise … of the place social media was and, I feel, a eager understanding of the place it is evolving,” mentioned McCourt.
McCourt mentioned Ohanian will assist promote the Venture Liberty bid to purchase the US belongings of TikTok, which he calls “The Folks’s Bid,” due to plans to run the app on know-how that lets customers management how their information might be used and shared.
“The place he might help principally is validating but additionally socializing what we’re doing,” mentioned McCourt. “On the one hand, this can be a mission which has very refined know-how on the core, and so that you’re coping with a really particular viewers on the subject of demonstrating the validity of that know-how and in the way it works, and why it is necessary.”
“After which you’ve gotten a very completely different constituency, which is principally non-technologists, who’re impacted by this know-how greater than they notice,” McCourt mentioned.
Ohanian mentioned he was excited to work on the mission and provides folks extra management over their information.
The previous Los Angeles Dodgers proprietor and his companions submitted a bid for TikTok in early January, as a deadline approached that might require ByteDance to promote the app to a US proprietor or face a ban.
The app briefly shut down within the US hours earlier than the ban was slated to take impact on Jan. 19, then started restoring service after President-elect Donald Trump mentioned he would revive the app’s entry.
Trump granted a 75-day delay in implementing the ban and requested Vice President JD Vance to supervise the sale course of.
The prospect of gaining possession over one of many world’s most recognised video-sharing platforms, or at the least its US viewers, has drawn an more and more lengthy record of individuals and entities starting from the world of finance, know-how and leisure.
Different bidders embrace a bunch of traders led by tech entrepreneur Jesse Tinsley, which incorporates the YouTube character MrBeast, whose actual title is Jimmy Donaldson, and Wyoming entrepreneur Reid Rasner.
McCourt mentioned he has despatched in depth details about his TikTok bid to the White Home, together with particulars about his financing, his strategy to the know-how and the way his bid satisfies nationwide safety points.
TikTok’s Chinese language dad or mum, ByteDance, is just “flippantly” engaged, mentioned McCourt. It has not retained a banker, nor outlined a set of belongings to be bought — not to mention set a valuation, he mentioned. He mentioned there’s a chance that ByteDance elects to close down the favored short-video app utilized by half of America’s inhabitants, quite than promote it.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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