US Politics
TikTok finally signs deal to sell its US entity to joint venture controlled by American investors
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TikTok has signed a deal to sell its U.S. entity in a joint venture majority-controlled by American investors Oracle and Silver Lake, along with Abu Dhabi-based MGX.
Those firms are set to own 45 percent of the U.S. company, at 15 percent each, while roughly one-third will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors. Nearly 20 percent will be retained by ByteDance.
The closing date for the new entity, USDS Joint Venture LLC, is January 22, according to an internal memo. The joint venture will be “majority owned by American investors” — including tech giant Oracle and private equity firm Silver Lake — and “governed by a new seven-member majority-American board of directors, and subject to terms that protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security,” according to CEO Shou Zi Chew.
The deal ends a long-running effort to force TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance to sell off the company’s U.S. operations to American entities or lose the ability to run the popular video-based social media app in the country.
President Donald Trump extended the deadline for TikTok to find a U.S. buyer by an additional 75 days in April to “ensure all necessary approvals are signed” while preventing the app from going dark in the United States.
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The joint venture will be responsible for user data, content moderation and “software assurance,” according to the memo.
Chew added that the venture will also have “the exclusive right and authority to provide assurances that content, software, and data for American users is secure.”
Oracle — whose founder Larry Ellison is a Trump ally — will be the company’s “trusted security partner” against national security concerns.
The deal cements a major victory for the president, with one of the world’s most popular social media apps and a key messaging platform now in the hands of a key billionaire ally. Trump is also allied with Elon Musk, who owns X, formerly Twitter, while Mark Zuckerberg — whose Meta operates Facebook and Instagram — has dropped his adversarial relationship with the president and courted his administration.
TikTok’s prized algorithm will be “free from outside manipulation,” according to the memo.
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The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by Joe Biden in 2024 with bipartisan support.
Members of Congress and federal law enforcement agencies at the time argued that the app presents a national security threat that could allow the Chinese government to mine data from its millions of users and show manipulative content.
TikTok said in a statement at the time that the ban was jammed through Congress using “flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people.”
A federal appeals court turned down TikTok’s lawsuit seeking to block a deadline for the sale, teeing up a Supreme Court challenge.
In an unsigned opinion in January, hours before Trump entered office, justices upheld the law that forced TikTok to divest, arguing that “Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns.
Trump — who appeared to change his tune around the app, which he had previously supported banning — later issued an executive order to approve a deal to transfer control of the app to a U.S. business group. In his first term in office, Trump issued an executive order banning the platform altogether, which the company successfully challenged in court.
At a signing ceremony in the Oval Office in September, Trump announced Chinese President Xi Jinping had approved a proposed deal that met American national security concerns and would be valued at around $14 billion.
Asked whether the platform would now recommend more “MAGA-related” content, Trump replied: “I always like MAGA-related. If I could, I’d make it a hundred percent MAGA-related.”
“But it’s not going to work out that way, unfortunately,” he said. “No, everyone’s going to be treated fairly.”