Billionaire Frank McCourt assembles "people's bid" to buy TikTok

• Unlike other potential bidders, McCourt says he doesn't want TikTok's algorithm.
• News of the effort was first reported by Semafor.

Zoom in: McCourt doesn't have enough cash to buy TikTok on his own, so he's retained Guggenheim Securities to effectively crowdfund via both institutions and individuals.

• Among those endorsing his effort is Tim Berners-Lee, the person credited with inventing the World Wide Web.

The big picture: ByteDance is subject to a new U.S. law requiring it to divest TikTok on national security grounds, or else risk the app being banned.

• It's filed a legal challenge, and big questions remain about whether the Chinese government would even allow ByteDance to sell TikTok (particularly with its algorithm included).
• "I've been involved in a lot of large deals, and things take different twists and turns," McCourt tells Axios. "There's a distinct possibility that ByteDance will be willing to sell TikTok U.S. without the algorithm, which we don't want, so we want all our ducks lined up."

The bottom line: TikTok has several willing buyers. It just doesn't yet have a willing seller.