FEBRUARY 20, 2025|
Photo – Reid Rasner – Courtesy reidrasner.com
The Wyoming businessman who ran and lost a long-shot campaign to unseat Senator John Barrasso is now in the hunt for a very different kind of prize.
Reid Rasner has made a 50 billion dollar offer to buy Tik Tok.
The 40-year-old Casper native and financial advisor is seeking to purchase the controversial social media company with ties to China.
The social media giant went dark briefly in the United States last month. Under a federal law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, Tik Tok’s parent company ByteDance was required to sell the platform to an approved buyer by January 21 or face a nationwide ban. A few hours before the ban took effect, TikTok became unusable for users in the United States. It came back online a few hours later, with TikTok crediting incoming President Donald Trump for stalling the ban.
In this week’s stunning move, Rasner wants to establish Tik Tok in Wyoming. Rasner is seeking a controlling stake in Tik Tok’s assets, operations and propriety algorithm for $47.45 billion dollars, according to a letter sent this week to ByteDance.
The letter was sent from a company called Rasner Media. Steve Roberts, the legal counsel for the firm, wrote, “By establishing Tik Tok’s operations in Wyoming, Reid will ignite a new era of economic diversification, creating thousands of high paying jobs that will not only benefit the tech sector, but also supercharge Wyoming’s energy, agriculture, and tourism industries.”
The letter from Rasner’s legal team also states that “this initiative will bring skilled workers, cutting edge innovation, and new investment opportunities into the state, strengthening the economy while ensuring Wyoming remains a national leader in multiple sectors.”
When President Trump saved Tik Tok from going dark, he pledged to save the social media giant. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order granting a 75-day reprieve from the death sentence signed into law by former President Joe Biden on his way out of office.
Protestors, many of them young people, gathered in Washington, D.C. carrying homemade signs that read “Keep Tik Tok.”
The big worry is that the Chinese Communist Party is a secret player in the social media influencer, which reaches over 170 million users in the U.S. alone. Through their influence, the CCP has access to browsing histories, biometric identifiers, and geographical data.
With so much reach and influence, Tik Tok is sought by investors beyond Wyoming’s Rasner.
Oracle, a cloud-based computing company based in Austin, Texas, owned by billionaire Larry Ellison, also is thought to be looking into acquiring Tik Tok. So is Elon Musk, who holds stakes in Tesla and Space X.
In Rasner’s letter pitching his offer to purchase Tik Tok, the Casper native noted that “Wyoming offers unmatched energy stability, efficiency and sustainability.”
According to an article in the New York post, the letter from Rasner Media hopes to develop “comprehensive non-disclosure agreements and conduct due diligence over a six-month period” as it looks to acquire a controlling interest.
Tik Tok is considered to be a prized asset, but the terms of any other offers to purchase the Chinese company have not been made available.
