According to the company, on the day before the deadline set by President Donald Trump for the transfer of American assets from the Chinese parent company ByteDance, a joint venture was officially created to acquire these TikTok assets, and its management team was announced.
This deal concludes a lengthy process aimed at securing TikTok's future in the US and alleviating concerns about potential national security threats.
“The newly created joint venture, with a controlling stake held by Americans, will operate under strict guarantees aimed at protecting data, ensuring algorithm security, content moderation, and software for US users,” the group stated in a release published on Thursday.
The joint venture will be led by CEO Adam Presser, who previously oversaw the security of American user data at TikTok, and Security Director Will Farrell, who will ensure privacy and security within this project.
Oversight of the process will be conducted by a board of directors that includes TikTok's US CEO Shou Chew, Kenneth Gluck, Executive Vice President of Oracle, as well as representatives from investment firms Susquehanna International Group and Silver Lake, the Emirati investment company MGX, and others.
Donald Trump expressed gratitude to Chinese President Xi Jinping for his “cooperation and approval of the deal.”
“He could have acted differently, but he didn’t, and his decision deserves respect,” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social.
So far, the Chinese government has not commented on the final structure of the deal. CNN has reached out to the Ministry of Commerce of China for comments.
Trump also noted that he is “very glad to have helped save TikTok” and expressed appreciation to his staff who contributed to the “great, final, and successful completion” of the deal.
The story of TikTok in the US began when Trump promised to ban the app during his first presidential term. Tensions escalated in 2024 when then-President Joe Biden signed a law requiring the American version of the app to be separated from the parent company ByteDance or face a ban in the country. During his second term, Trump repeatedly postponed the enforcement of the law, seeking to finalize a deal to transfer control of the app's American operations to American owners.
When Trump approved the deal last fall, he set a deadline for completing the transaction—January 23. TikTok signed the deal last month.
This deal is positive news for more than 200 million American TikTok users, many of whom use the app for entertainment, news, and even earning money.
According to the agreement, control over the data of American TikTok users and most of its operations in the US has been transferred to the new joint venture, 50% of which will be owned by a consortium of investors, including tech company Oracle, investment firm Silver Lake, and Emirati MGX. As stated in a memo sent to staff by Chew last month, just over 30% of the joint venture will be owned by “affiliates of some existing ByteDance investors,” while 19.9% will remain with ByteDance.
The new structure plans to retrain the TikTok algorithm based on American user data, and Oracle will be responsible for its storage. The American joint venture will also handle content moderation for US users. However, as noted in Chew's memo, the global structure of TikTok, controlled by ByteDance, will continue to manage e-commerce, advertising, and marketing on the new American platform.
This means that the user experience for American users in the app is unlikely to change significantly, although the algorithm responsible for displaying videos in their feeds may undergo changes once the new ownership team takes control.
Last year, Trump defined the deal to separate the subsidiary as a “qualified asset sale” under the law regarding sales or bans. However, questions remain about how thoroughly this agreement addresses the core national security issues that prompted American lawmakers to pass this law on a bipartisan basis.
American officials have expressed concerns that ByteDance could be forced to manipulate the algorithm in the interests of the Chinese government to influence Americans or provoke discontent among them. The law banning or selling TikTok prohibited “any cooperation regarding the content recommendation algorithm” between ByteDance and the new potential American ownership group.
“Collaboration between the companies will allow the joint venture to provide American users with a global TikTok experience, ensuring the ability to find American content creators and conduct business on an international scale,” the joint venture group stated.
According to the agreement signed on Thursday, the new joint venture will continue to license the TikTok algorithm from ByteDance, after which it will engage in retraining and verification.
Until the last moment, there was uncertainty about whether Beijing would approve it. TikTok has become an important tool in broader US-China trade negotiations; the deal was previously derailed last year after Trump announced a new round of tariffs.
Last month, Ministry spokesperson He Yunchang confirmed the achievement of a basic framework consensus between Beijing and Washington on issues related to TikTok and trade.
“The Chinese government hopes that enterprises will reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and reflect a balance of interests,” he stated at a press conference. “China also expects the US side to act in the same direction, fulfilling its obligations and ensuring a fair, open, and non-discriminatory business environment for the stable operation of Chinese companies in the US.”
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The American cloud computing company Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and investment firm MGX from Abu Dhabi will each own 15% of the shares in the new joint venture.
The chairman of Oracle's board is Larry Ellison—a major sponsor of the Republican Party and a close friend of Donald Trump. In September, Trump specifically mentioned the 81-year-old Ellison as one of the investors who raised “huge funds” to finance this deal.
The company will be responsible for retraining TikTok's powerful recommendation algorithm, which influences the content available to users.
The Chinese parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, will retain 19.9% of the shares, allowing it to remain below the legally established 20% threshold.
The remaining 35.1% of the joint venture is owned by: the family office of Dell CEO Michael Dell, another Trump supporter; Vastmere Strategic Investments, a subsidiary of the quantitative trading firm Susquehanna, founded by another Trump ally, Jeff Yass; Alpha Wave Partners; Revolution; Meritt Way; Via Nova; Virgo LI; and NJJ Capital.
What is Oracle and what role will it play in TikTok's operations in the US?
BBC Technology Correspondent in North America.
As previously reported, cloud giant Oracle will become a key player in the new joint venture, the agreement for which was finalized on Thursday.
According to the joint venture, it will be responsible for protecting the data of 200 million TikTok users in the US.
Oracle will also be involved in retraining the powerful TikTok recommendation algorithm that shapes content for users. The company's founder, Larry Ellison, is a long-time political ally and friend of President Trump.
Last year, he was briefly the richest person in the world, surpassing Elon Musk.
Recently, Ellison has often been in the news not only because of TikTok. He is leading a hostile bid against Netflix and last year struck a deal that saw his family take the helm of another major media company—Paramount. (BBC is a partner of CBS News, which is owned by Paramount.)
