Frank McCourt is open to a 50% stake in TikTok after Trump’s comments

Frank McCourt said his Project Liberty consortium, which has bid to buy TikTok, would be comfortable sharing ownership of the app as long as it is organized around technology developed by his non-profit.

“I’m fine with anything that’s legal … and the US government is fine with it,” McCourt told CNBC in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

McCourt’s remarks come after President Donald Trump last week said he would like the US to have a “50% ownership position in a joint venture” in TikTok.

The Supreme Court last week approved the law requiring ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok or face an effective ban. Since TikTok was not sold by Sunday’s legal deadline, the app was closed to US users and was also removed from the Apple and Google app stores. But TikTok began restoring some services on Sunday after Trump said he would sign an executive order delaying a federal ban on the app, which he did on Monday.

The executive order allows TikTok to continue operating for another 75 days.

With all the twists and turns, McCourt said he is open to any trade deal, including a 50% stake rather than full ownership.

“I’m not going to be the decision maker there. You know, that’s President Trump’s deal now it’s in his administration … and you know, everything will be worked out,” McCourt said.

“We’re not flexible about the values ​​and principles of the Liberty Project, are we?” he added. “We are completely flexible about trade agreements, as long as they respect the law.”

McCourt’s condition is that TikTok must run on technology called the Decentralized Social Network Protocol, or DSNP, which is overseen by the Project Liberty Institute, the nonprofit founded by the billionaire.

McCourt has been a critic of the way social media and internet companies collect user data and target it with ads. He said that this current model, where the user has little control over their data, needs to change.

DSNP is focused on making these changes. The protocol is a technology that third-party developers can build applications on top of, but users are able to choose how their data is used and who has access to it.

If they don’t like a particular application, they can migrate their content and data to another service built on top of DSNP.

McCourt’s goal is to buy TikTok and put it on DSNP.

“The user experience would be very similar, with one big exception — owning your identity and data and your relationships would be quite different from how Tiktok currently works,” McCourt said.

“So if Project Liberty, or someone else … buys Tiktok in the US and it does a poor job, the underlying technology will allow the entire user base to go to another app that’s doing a better job, he added.

Project Liberty has made an offer to buy TikTok without its core algorithm.

Project Liberty is “not interested in the algorithm or the Chinese technology,” McCourt said, though he acknowledged that TikTok “is worth less” without the algorithm. Many experts have said that TikTok’s success is largely due to its algorithm, which keeps users hooked on the app.

It is unclear whether ByteDance will sell TikTok or whether China will agree to any kind of US sale of the app

Project Liberty is organizing the bid for TikTok with a consortium of other investors. It’s been called the People’s Bid for TikTok, but there are other potential buyers circling.

Trump said Tuesday he would consider Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison buying TikTok. The comments follow a report that the Chinese government is considering a plan that would involve Musk buying the operations.

YouTube star MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, along with a group of investors are also preparing to make a bid for TikTok, his lawyer confirmed this week to various media outlets.

– CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian, Hakyung Kim and Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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