TL;DR: It's fair to say that former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is not a well-liked person. He's also reportedly interested in buying TikTok, with help from OpenAI boss Sam Altman and others, should the US government force owner ByteDance to divest the app.
Last week, a group of lawmakers announced a bill that would force ByteDance to divest TikTok within about six months should it pass. Otherwise, the app will be blocked from app stores and web hosting platforms in the US.
In response, TikTok sent messages to users encouraging them to lobby their representatives. President Biden also gave his backing to the bill, saying that "if they pass it, I'll sign it."
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, one person interested in acquiring TikTok is Bobby Kotick. He mentioned the idea of partnering on such a deal with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others who were seated with him during a dinner at an Allen & Co. conference last week.
Bobby Kotick spent 33 years as CEO of Activision, during which time he faced plenty of controversy. His departure from the company in December following Microsoft's acquisition was met with celebrations from gamers and developers. There were tales of his interference with the development of Activision games over the years and his role in killing off Blizzard titles in China.
Kotick was also accused of leaving a voicemail threatening to kill an assistant in 2006 and was the subject of a flight attendant's sexual harassment lawsuit in 2007. He faced allegations of incidents involving rape and harassment stretching from the mid-2010s through 2021, and Kotick and Activision had to pay a $35 million settlement last year after failing to maintain adequate controls to report and address misconduct within the company. Activision Blizzard also paid $54 million in 2021 to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit in California.
The alleged $15 million golden parachute Kotick received upon leaving Activision did little to endear him to the public, too.
Kotick's plan to buy TikTok might be more than just talk; he's said to have brought it up with ByteDance Executive Chair Zhang Yiming. TikTok was found to be the fastest-growing social media platform in the US in January, with an estimated 150 million users in the US – more than any other country – so its price tag could reach well above $100 billion, which is why Kotick would need plenty of financial help from the likes of Altman, who could decide to use its content to train his company's AI models.
ByteDance's alleged ties with Beijing, which it has repeatedly denied, have led to TikTok being banned by most government agencies, not just in the US but also in other countries.