Business moguls like Elon Musk should be prepared to spend tens of billions of dollars on TikTok’s US operations if parent company ByteDance decides to sell.

TikTok faces a possible ban in the US if the Supreme Court decides to uphold a national security law banning service providers like Apple And Google would be penalized if the app was hosted after Sunday’s deadline. ByteDance has not indicated it will sell the app’s U.S. unit, but the Chinese government has considered a plan in which X owner Musk would take over operations as part of several scenarios being considered, Bloomberg News reported on Monday.

If ByteDance decides to sell, potential buyers may have to shell out between $40 billion and $50 billion. That’s the value that Angelo Zino, senior vice president of CFRA Research, estimated for TikTok’s U.S. operations. Zino based his valuation on estimates of TikTok’s US user base and revenue compared to rival apps.

TikTok has about 115 million monthly mobile users in the U.S., slightly behind Instagram’s 131 million, according to an estimate by market research firm Sensor Tower. This puts TikTok ahead Snapchat, Pinterest And Redditwhich have a monthly mobile user base of 96 million, 74 million and 32 million in the US, according to Sensor Tower.

However, Zino’s estimate is lower than the $60 billion-plus he estimated for the unit in March 2024, when the House of Representatives passed the first national security bill, which President Joe Biden signed into law the following month.

The lower estimate is due to TikTok’s current geopolitical situation and the fact that “industry metrics have increased somewhat since March,” Zino told CNBC in an email. Zino’s estimate does not include TikTok’s valuable recommendation algorithms, which a U.S. acquirer would not receive as part of a deal, as the algorithms and their alleged ties to China are central to the U.S. government’s argument that TikTok is a poses a threat to national security.

Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence estimate TikTok’s operations in the US at $30 billion to $35 billion. That’s the estimate they released in July. It was said at the time that the value of the unit would be “decreased because it was a forced sale.”

Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence noted that it will be challenging to find a buyer for TikTok’s U.S. operations that can both afford the deal and handle the regulatory privacy scrutiny that comes with it. It could also be difficult for a buyer to grow TikTok’s ad business, they wrote.

A consortium of businessmen including billionaire Frank McCourt and O’Leary Ventures chairman Kevin O’Leary have made a bid to buy TikTok from ByteDance. O’Leary had previously said the group would be willing to pay up to $20 billion to acquire the US assets without the algorithm.

Unlike a Musk offer, the O’Leary Group’s offer would be free from regulatory scrutiny, O’Leary said in a Monday interview with Fox News.

O’Leary said he was “a big fan of Elon Musk” but added: “The idea that the regulator would allow this even under Trump’s administration is pretty tenuous.”

TikTok, X and O’Leary Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.

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