'Shark Tank' star Kevin O'Leary is part of a bid to buy TikTok — but it's not for sale. Yet.

• A group including "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary and Frank McCourt has submitted a bid for TikTok.
• They face an uphill battle to buy the app, with owner Bytedance still fighting a looming US ban.
• McCourt previously told BI the deal, which does not include TikTok's algorithm, faces a murky path to success.

"Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary is teaming up with billionaire Frank McCourt on a long shot effort to buy TikTok.

O'Leary and the former Los Angeles Dodgers owner are part of a group called "The People's Bid for TikTok," which said on Thursday it had submitted a bid for the video app to Chinese tech giant Bytedance.

The consortium has an uphill battle to acquire TikTok, despite the app being threatened with a ban in the US if it's not sold by January 19.

Bytedance insists it has no plans to sell the app, which has some 170 million US users, despite President Joe Biden signing a law in April setting a deadline for the app to be sold, or face a ban.

Bytedance is challenging the law in the Supreme Court after losing appeals in lower courts, claiming the potential ban from US app stores is a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.

The court is due to hear oral arguments in the case on Friday.

President-elect Donald Trump has asked the court to pause the law that would ban TikTok until after his inauguration later this month.

Any deal to buy TikTok is complicated by the fact that TikTok's recommendation algorithm — the key to the app's compulsive scrolling — is likely covered by Chinese export rules prohibiting the sale of sensitive technology without a license.

No clarity

McCourt told Business Insider in December that the group's $20 billion-plus proposal, which would not include the recommendation algorithm, is complicated because "we don't know what ByteDance is selling."

He said that Bytedance had refused to discuss a potential sale, meaning it was "very, very difficult to have precision" over what a deal might look like.

McCourt and O'Leary's vision for the app, which is also backed by the likes of investment firm Guggenheim Securities and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, includes turning TikTok into a decentralized social media app that gives users more control over their personal data.

The group said they would aim to work closely with incoming president Donald Trump, who has previously expressed support for TikTok and met with the company's CEO last month.

Bytedance did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.