Khaby Lame's mystery: TikTok's top creator teased a $975 million deal and then went silent
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Khaby Lame's mysterious $975 million deal has hit a snag: Brokerages are restricting or blocking trading in the stock behind it.
Lame, TikTok's top influencer with over 160 million followers, announced in January that he'd struck a deal that would get him a gigantic payday and let everyday investors buy a stake in his business. To make this happen, Lame's company would merge with the publicly traded Rich Sparkle Holdings, a financial printing firm.
Day traders pounced on the opportunity, buying stock in the company Lame would list under. Rich Sparkle's stock surged on the announcement.
The initial excitement quickly faded. The stock has plunged more than 90% from its January high amid confusion over the deal's future. There haven't been any formal filings indicating that the deal was done, or that Lame's company has received the 75 million shares it was promised.
Now, a handful of prominent investment platforms have restricted trading in Rich Sparkle's shares.
Interactive Brokers lists the stock as non-tradable. A spokesperson for Interactive Brokers said the company "periodically reviews the securities it makes available for its clients to trade and restricts those it has determined are not appropriate to offer."
Others, including ETrade, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Vanguard, blocked online trading or put restrictions on the stock.
Some platforms, including Robinhood and Webull, are allowing trading as normal.
Rich Sparkle didn't respond to multiple requests for comment.
Lame, who in January said he was "excited" to become a Rich Sparkle shareholder, hasn't said anything about the deal publicly since then. He has removed Rich Sparkle's stock ticker, ANPA, from his Instagram and TikTok bios, and his team hasn't responded to multiple requests for comment, either directly or through intermediaries.
Rich Sparkle had a market cap of roughly $133 million as of Wednesday's close. Some brokers limit trading in low market-cap stocks because they may not stick around for long and can create logistical headaches for a firm's back office if they disappear, said James Angel, a finance professor and FINRA program director at Georgetown University.
"Brokers feel they are doing their customers (as well as their back offices) a favor by not letting customers buy them," Angel said.
Questions multiply around the deal
Lame, a Senegalese-Italian influencer, rose to fame on TikTok through dialogue-free videos about overly complicated life hacks, like melting butter into 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 top star, MrBeast, has built a company valued at about $5 billion, but few other creators have secured such a rich valuation. Unlike MrBeast's company, Lame's would have been publicly traded, giving retail investors an uncommon opportunity to invest directly in the fortunes of an individual creator.
The deal's announcement sparked a wave of optimism among creator economy insiders, who saw it as proof of the industry's value. The vibes have turned more skeptical as questions about the deal mount.
Rich Sparkle called the acquisition "completed" in a January press release; its most recent SEC filing on March 31 still described the deal as contingent on certain conditions. A January filing said the deal would be void if those conditions weren't met or waived by February 28.
Rich Sparkle is registered in the British Virgin Islands and based in Hong Kong. Due to a quirk in how foreign-registered companies file in the US, it could take months for the deal's status to be revealed to retail investors, Angel said.
When we called Rich Sparkle's Hong Kong office to find out if the deal had closed, we were directed to the same corporate email address we've been messaging for months, with no reply.
Under 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.
"It started the upward climb all the way up to $180, and I was like, 'Oh, should have held,'" said Eric Moore, a day trader who sold his Rich Sparkle shares before the deal was announced.
As the company's share price has plummeted, so has the value of Lame's potential stake, which Rich Sparkle initially valued at $975 million.
Some of the day traders who jumped into the short-lived Rich Sparkle upswing told us they were trying to make a quick buck on a high-flying stock — and not concerned with its long-term prospects.
Those prospects matter for where the share price will settle, which will determine Lame's potential windfall and could impact broader perceptions of creator-fronted businesses.
Khaby Lame has done deals with Hugo Boss and other brands.Max Cisotti/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Esquire UK
A bold proposal that drew industry skepticism
As part of the deal, Rich Sparkle said it planned to create an AI avatar of Lame to do brand deals and sell products on social media. Digital avatars are booming in e-commerce in China and, unlike human sellers, can sell around the clock. Some avatars have made millions in sales in a single livestream.
Still, Rich Sparkle's estimate that Lame's avatar could drive $4 billion in annual product sales seemed wildly optimistic, industry insiders previously told us.
The influencer data company CreatorIQ said it considers Lame to be among the most impactful creators based on the value of posts from brands, media, and other creators that mention him. By this measure, it estimates he's earned $218.9 million from 2020 to 2025 in "EMV," its metric for digital earned media, or unpaid mentions like press coverage.
Lame has worked with major brands including Hugo Boss, Airbnb, and Visa. He nabbed a cameo in Will Smith and Martin Lawrence-starring "Bad Boys: Ride or Die" (2024) and starred in the one-season "Khaby is Coming to America" on the free Fox streamer Tubi (2024), in which he meets and talks with celebs like David Beckham and Alicia Keys.
Lame left the US in June 2025 after ICE detained him, saying he overstayed his visa. After that, he went on a multi-city trip to China in September, where he posted about sampling the food and culture.
Nicola Paparusso, an Italian film producer and talent manager who repped Lame until November, told us he wanted Lame to pivot to mainstream acting.
"I said, 'You can't be an influencer forever,'" Paparusso recalled telling Lame when they were working together. He said the two parted ways over strategy direction and that he didn't know about the Rich Sparkle deal.
In recent days, Lame has been busy posting on TikTok, filming a collaboration with Lego, and signing on to be an ambassador for the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games.
He's made no recent mentions of the Rich Sparkle deal.
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