Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary, never one to back down from a challenge, finds himself in the thick of one of the most complex international business sagas in recent memory: the potential sale of TikTok‘s U.S. operations.
The outspoken investor has publicly declared his intent to lead a syndicate to acquire the popular app, but as he laid out in a social media post on Monday, the path to a deal is a minefield of geopolitical and technical challenges.
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The Details: O'Leary wrote in the post that the heart of the issue is the lack of a willing seller as any potential deal requires the approval of both President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
"We don’t have a seller yet. However the syndicate ends up, we don’t know. This is a complicated deal. Two factors to consider: Number one, we need Xi and Trump to agree they’re gonna be a buyer and a seller. That’s number one," O'Leary wrote.
The second major obstacle is TikTok's algorithm itself, the investor said.
"Number two, we need to figure out a way to take care of Sen. Cotton’s concerns around the algorithm and many others who are not going to give an indemnification for using the original algorithm. We have to solve for that too," O'Leary wrote.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and other legislators have raised national security concerns, insisting that any sale must guarantee a complete separation from Chinese technology and influence. They fear the algorithm could be used for data harvesting or to push foreign propaganda to its 170 million American users.
Despite these roadblocks, O’Leary remains characteristically confident.
“My bet, not to sound arrogant, is I will be there at the table at the end,” he wrote in the post.
The world will watch to see if Mr. Wonderful can navigate the intricate web of politics and technology to pull off this “legacy opportunity” deal.
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