Frank McCourt announced on Monday that Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and a noted venture capitalist, has joined his bid to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations.
Ohanian will serve as a strategic adviser specializing in social media, lending his extensive experience in the tech sector to support what McCourt has dubbed "The People's Bid."
The announcement was made during discussions outlining Project Liberty, McCourt’s proposal to purchase the U.S. assets of TikTok. McCourt stated that the bid is designed to run the popular video-sharing app on technology that would give users greater control over how their data is used and shared. "He has that broad portfolio of experience … of where social media was and, I think, a keen understanding of where it’s evolving," McCourt said, referring to Ohanian’s background.
Ohanian, who helped found Reddit while studying at the University of Virginia and later returned to the company as executive chair after its sale to Conde Nast, has since built a portfolio of investments in tech companies including Instacart, Patreon, and OpenSea. He expressed enthusiasm about contributing to the project and advancing the goal of increased data control for users.
McCourt, a former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and his partners submitted their bid for TikTok in early January. The bid came as a deadline approached requiring ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to sell the app’s U.S. operations or face a potential ban. The app was briefly shut down in the U.S. just before the ban was scheduled to take effect on January 19, but services were later restored following intervention by President-elect Donald Trump, who granted a 75-day delay in enforcing the ban and tasked Vice President JD Vance with overseeing the sale process.
In addition to the Project Liberty team, other bidders—ranging from tech entrepreneurs to investment groups—are vying for control of TikTok’s U.S. assets. McCourt has already submitted detailed information about his financing, technological approach, and plans to address national security concerns to the White House. He noted that ByteDance has so far shown only minimal engagement, having not retained a banker or defined a clear set of assets for sale, leaving open the possibility that the company might opt to shut down the app rather than sell it.
The move represents another chapter in the ongoing debate over the future of TikTok in the United States, as policymakers and industry stakeholders continue to assess both the national security implications and the broader impact of social media on data privacy. With figures like Ohanian joining the bid, Project Liberty aims to leverage its combined expertise to offer a new model for managing one of the world's most widely used digital platforms.
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