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Kevin O’Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful in the popular show Shark Tank, revealed on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom on January 17, 2025, that he is willing to pay $20 billion to buy TikTok from its parent company ByteDance. According to the BBC’s report, the social media app will be banned on January 19, 2025, if ByteDance doesn’t sell it.
Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary is famous for appearing on Shark Tank, investing in businesses, and being a harsh critic. He has recently been a topic of discussion for offering to buy Tiktok. According to celebritynetworth.com, O’Leary’s net worth is reportedly $400 million.
Kevin O’Leary’s life and career explored
Kevin O’Leary was born in Montreal, Canada on July 9, 1954, to immigrant parents. His mother is of Lebanese descent, and his father is of Irish descent. After his parents’ divorce, his mother remarried. His stepfather, Gorge Kanawaty, an economist, worked in the UN’s International Labour Organization. So, he spent his childhood years in multiple countries, such as Cambodia, Tunisia, and Cyprus.
According to The Street, Kevin O’Leary’s mother was an amateur investor who taught him the fundamentals of investing, saving, and money management. He pursued his bachelor’s degree from the University of Waterloo in 1977 and got his MBA from Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario in 1980.
After getting his MBA, O’Leary founded his television production company, Special Event Television, with Scott Mackenzie and Dave Toms from his business school. The company saw decent success before he sold his shares to one of his partners for $25,000. O’Leary then founded the software company Softkey in 1986 with John Freeman and Gary Babcock.
In an interview on April 17, 2015, he told Business Insider how he had to borrow $10,000 from his mother when an investor pulled out a $250,000 offer at the last moment. He then took the money from his mother and the $25,000 he received after selling his shares to found Softkey. He shared that he was desperate back then and that his mother was the only one who could help him.
“In my desperation, I called the only person I knew who had $10,000 at her disposal: my mother. If I could make payroll for a couple months, I knew I’d be able to keep the company afloat before we took it public. My mother wrote me a check, and we were in business for six more months.”
He said the amount was not significant, but it forced him to make “vital decisions.”
“$10,000 isn’t a lot of cash when it comes to running a business, but it forced me to make vital decisions about which limbs were worth spending on and which should be cut off. With this money, I was able to take SoftKey public and sell it for $4.2 billion.”
According to a report in The New York Times on December 8, 1995, Kevin O’Leary’s Softway acquired The Learning Company (TLC) for $606 million and adopted the name after the acquisition. In 1999, O’Leary sold his company to Mattel for $4.2 billion.
Throughout the years, Kevin O’Leary has invested in multiple companies. He made his first television appearance on the CBS show Dragon’s Den in 2006, where he invested in companies. In 2009, O’Leary joined the American version of the show Shark Tank. He left the British show Dragon’s Den in 2014.
