Top TikToker Khaby Lame’s $975 Million Deal Hits Stock Snag

Khaby Lame’s mysterious $975 million deal has hit a snag: brokerages are restricting or blocking trading of the shares behind the deal.

Lame, the top TikTok influencer with more than 160 million followers, announced in January that he had reached a deal that would earn him a gigantic salary and allow ordinary investors to acquire a stake in his company. To achieve this, Lame’s company would merge with Rich Sparkle Holdings, a publicly traded financial printing company.

Day traders seized the opportunity and purchased shares of the Lame company which would be listed below. Rich Sparkle’s stock jumped following this announcement.

The initial enthusiasm quickly faded. The stock has plunged more than 90% from its January high amid confusion over the future of the deal. No official records have been filed indicating that the deal was completed or that Lame’s company received the promised 75 million shares.

Today, a handful of leading investment platforms have restricted trading in Rich Sparkle’s shares.

Interactive Brokers lists the shares as non-tradable. An Interactive Brokers spokesperson said the company “periodically reviews the securities it makes available to its clients and restricts those it deems inappropriate to offer.”

Others, including ETrade, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Vanguard, have blocked online trading or placed restrictions on stocks.

Some platforms, including Robinhood and Webull, allow trading as normal.

Rich Sparkle did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Lame, who in January said he was “excited” about becoming a Rich Sparkle shareholder, has since said nothing publicly about the deal. He removed Rich Sparkle’s ticker symbol, ANPA, from his Instagram and TikTok bios, and his team did not respond to multiple requests for comment, either directly or through intermediaries.

Rich Sparkle had a market capitalization of approximately $133 million as of Wednesday’s close. Some brokers limit trading in stocks with small market caps because they may not stick around for long and can create logistical problems for a company’s back office if they disappear, said James Angel, a finance professor and director of the FINRA program at Georgetown University.

“Brokers feel like they are doing their clients (as well as their back offices) a favor by not letting clients buy them,” Angel said in an email.

Questions multiply around the agreement

Lame, a Senegalese-Italian influencer, rose to fame on TikTok thanks to dialogue-free videos about overly complicated life hacks, like melting butter in a deodorant stick before spreading it on bread.

His $975 million deal with Rich Sparkle put him in rarefied company in the creator economy. YouTube’s biggest star, MrBeast, has built a business valued at around $5 billion, but few other creators have achieved such a rich valuation. Unlike MrBeast’s company, Lame’s would have been publicly traded, providing retail investors a rare opportunity to invest directly in an individual creator’s fortune.

The announcement of the deal sparked a wave of optimism among those in the creative economy, who see it as proof of the industry’s value. The mood has become more skeptical as questions about the deal mount.

Rich Sparkle called the acquisition “completed” in a January press release; its last filing with the SEC, on March 31, still described the deal as being subject to certain conditions. A filing in January said the agreement would be void if those conditions were not met or waived by Feb. 28.

Rich Sparkle is registered in the British Virgin Islands and based in Hong Kong. Because of a quirk in the way foreign-registered companies file in the United States, it could take months before the status of the deal is revealed to retail investors, Angel said.

When we called Rich Sparkle’s office in Hong Kong to see if the deal had closed, we were directed to the same work email address we’ve been messaging with for months, with no response.

Under the terms of the deal, Lame’s company would receive Rich Sparkle stock — not cash — in exchange for its intellectual property.

When Rich Sparkle’s shares soared after the announcement, some retail investors watched with envy.

“That started the rise up to $180, and I was like, ‘Oh, I should have held,'” said Eric Moore, a day trader who sold his Rich Sparkle shares before the deal was announced.

As the company’s stock price fell, so did the value of Lame’s potential stake, which Rich Sparkle initially valued at $975 million.

Some day traders who jumped in on Rich Sparkle’s short-lived rally told us they were trying to make a quick buck on a high-flying stock — and weren’t concerned about its long-term prospects.

These prospects are important for the stock price, which will determine Lame’s potential windfall and could impact the broader perception of creator-led companies.

A bold proposal that sparked industry skepticism

As part of the deal, Rich Sparkle announced plans to create an AI avatar of Lame to strike brand deals and sell products on social media. Digital avatars are booming in e-commerce in China and, unlike human sellers, can sell 24 hours a day. Some avatars have made millions of sales in a single livestream.

Still, Rich Sparkle’s estimate that Blade’s avatar could generate $4 billion in annual product sales seemed wildly optimistic, industry insiders previously told us.

Influencer data company CreatorIQ said it considers Lame one of the most influential creators based on the value of posts from brands, media outlets and other creators who mention him. By that metric, it estimates it earned $218.9 million from 2020 to 2025 in “EMV,” its measure for digital earned media, or unpaid endorsements like news coverage.

Lame has worked with major brands including Hugo Boss, Airbnb and Visa. He landed a guest appearance in Will Smith and Martin Lawrence-starring “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” (2024) and starred in the “Khaby is Coming to America” ​​season on the free Fox streamer Tubi (2024), in which he meets and speaks with celebrities like David Beckham and Alicia Keys.

Lame left the United States in June 2025 after ICE arrested him, saying he had overstayed his visa. After that, he took a trip to several cities in China in September, where he posted about enjoying the food and culture.

Nicola Paparusso, an Italian film producer and talent manager who replaced Lame until November, told us he wants Lame to move into mainstream cinema.

“I said, ‘You can’t be an influencer forever,'” Paparusso recalled telling Blade when they worked together. He said the two had parted ways over strategic direction and that he was unaware of the Rich Sparkle deal.

In recent days, Lame has been busy posting on TikTok, filming a collaboration with Lego, and serving as an ambassador for the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games.

He has made no recent mention of the Rich Sparkle deal.

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