Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick reportedly wants to acquire TikTok

Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who stepped down late last year, is apparently interested in acquiring TikTok as a new product or a forced sale.according to a report Kotick mentioned the idea of ​​partnering on such an acquisition to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others sitting with him at a conference dinner last week, and raised the idea with ByteDance executive chairman Zhang Yiming . If TikTok is sold, wall street journal noted that it could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Kotick led Activision Blizzard for more than 30 years, but left underwhelming. This year, the company was accused of promoting sexual harassment and gender discrimination under his leadership in what was described as a “pervasive frat boy workplace culture.” Reports soon emerged that Kotick was aware of years of allegations of misconduct and assault but failed to properly disclose some of them to the board. He himself has been accused of harassment, noticed at the time. Activision Blizzard called the report “misleading.”

After the news came to light, Kotick was asked to resign, but this did not happen. Kotick eventually stayed on as head of Activision Blizzard in 2023.

Kotick’s reported interest in TikTok comes as lawmakers last week introduced the Protecting Americans from Apps Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act, which he would sign if passed. TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance would have six months to pass the bill, which was submitted to the House of Representatives for a vote on Wednesday. Otherwise, it will be banned from the US App Store.

TikTok has been trying to get millions of U.S. users to support the bill, sending out push notifications last week after the bill suddenly gained momentum. Following the House vote, the bill is expected to advance to the Senate after being approved unanimously by the Energy and Commerce Committee last week. While lawmakers’ concerns about TikTok center on concerns about data privacy and its ties to China, wall street journal noted that having Altman involved in the acquisition might open up the possibility that the app could be used by OpenAI to train its artificial intelligence models, but that doesn’t sound ideal for users either.

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