Philly billionaire Jeff Yass is one of TikTok’s biggest investors. He’s also donating millions to prevent the government from banning the app.

Philly-area billionaire Jeff Yass doesn’t want to ban TikTok — and he’s spent more than $60 million in support of Club for Growth, a conservative super PAC pushing against the bans.

Yass, a cofounder of Bala Cynwyd-based Susquehanna International Group, is one of the largest donors to Club for Growth, according to the Wall Street Journal, contributing $61 million since 2010. That accounts for 24% of the PAC’s political-spending arm, WSJ reported, citing federal records.

Susquehanna was an early investor in TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, and now holds about a 15% stake in the company. About 7% of that is Yass’ personal stake, worth roughly $21 billion, according to WSJ.

Club for Growth began to take an interest against TikTok bans in 2022, the group’s president, David McIntosh, told WSJ, prompted by a ban on federal employees’ use of the video-sharing app on government-owned devices.

Yass consulted with Club for Growth to gauge where members of Congress would fall on the issue of TikTok, which both Yass and McIntosh have viewed as a free-speech issue.

“I’ve supported libertarian and free market principles my entire adult life,” Yass told WSJ. “TikTok is about free speech and innovation, the epitome of libertarian and free market ideals. The idea of banning TikTok is an anathema to everything I believe.”

McIntosh said Yass and the group “naturally aligned” on how they choose candidates to support. He told WSJ that Yass would “never direct the Club for Growth to take an action or a position on things.”

Conservative support for a TikTok ban first grew during former President Donald Trump’s time in office, when the administration proposed several bans on social media apps with ties to China over fears that they would be used to spy for the Chinese government.

Trump signed two executive orders targeting TikTok and WeChat, a popular app that is also often described as an “everything app” that allows users to send and receive mobile payments, download and play video games, and perform many of the tasks individual apps such as Uber and Seamless enable users to do.

Both executive orders were thrown out by a federal court. Trump turned his attention to attempt to force a sale of the U.S. arm of TikTok to an American company.

TikTok first approached Microsoft, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who called the attempted forced acquisition the “strangest thing I’ve ever sort of worked on.”

Software giant Oracle and Walmart were set to enter into an agreement with TikTok that reportedly earned Trump’s blessing, but was eventually “shelved indefinitely,” according to WSJ.

Since then, politicians on both side of the aisle, including President Joe Biden, have criticized TikTok’s data privacy rules, which led to a ban of the app on government devices.

Experts have said it would be nearly impossible to ban the app, which as of March had more than 150 million U.S. users.

“I don’t really care what Congress writes, or what the administration writes. They’re not going to ban TikTok,” James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told Politico earlier this year. “They can ban financial transactions, or they can try to force divestiture. But they don’t have the ability to ban TikTok itself.”

Club for Growth’s website describes the group as “a national network of over 500,000 pro-growth, limited government Americans who share in the belief that prosperity and opportunity come from economic freedom.” Some of the group’s stated “top policy goals” range from broad initiatives, such as “reducing the size and scope of the federal government,” to more specific focus areas, such as school choice.

The debate over school choice came to a head in Pennsylvania earlier this year when Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro indicated support for a voucher program that drew immediate backlash from teachers’ unions and public school advocates. He later passed the state budget without a voucher program.

Yass and his wife, Janine, have been vocal supporters of school choice. Leading up to the 2022 primary, Yass donated at least $18 million to both Democratic and Republican candidates, Spotlight PA reported, largely to PACs that support school choice policies.

Club for Growth says it “is focused on conservative economic policy and does not take positions on social issues or on the immigration/borders debate.”