1 hour ago
4
ARTICLE AD BOX
TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance Ltd. has signed binding agreements with three major investors to sell just over 80% of US assets to American and global investors to avoid a US government ban.
In an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said he was “pleased to share some great news” and said agreements with Oracle Corp., Silver Lake and MGX have been signed.
- 50% of the investors are new, with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, an Abu Dhabi-based investment company, retaining 15% each.
- 30.1% will be held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance.
- 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance.
Chew gave a closing date of 22 January 2026.
“Upon the closing, the US joint venture, built on the foundation of the current TikTok US Data Security (USDS) organization, will operate as an independent entity with authority over US data protection, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurance,” Chew said in the memo. Meanwhile, “TikTok Global’s US entities will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing,” he wrote.
TikTok US Deal
The memo outlined a deal that matched what the White House announced in September, which was pending approval from China. Chew’s memo does not mention China’s opinion on the transaction.
After more than a year of negotiations, Washington arranged a sale of the US arm of ByteDance’s popular video app to a consortium of investors. If finalised, the TikTok US deal would remove a persistent issue in US-China relations and signal progress in broader talks. But it would also deprive China’s most valuable private company of total control of an American social media phenomenon.
ByteDance’s coveted algorithms are considered central to TikTok’s business. Under the the deal proposed by Washington, ByteDance will license its AI recommendation technology to a newly created US TikTok entity, which will use the existing algorithm to retrain a new system that is secured by Oracle, TikTok’s cloud partner.
TikTok US Sale Terms
The White House had dominated disclosures about the proposed arrangement, which was mandated on national security grounds by a law signed last year under the Joe Biden administration.
US officials have expressed concern that TikTok is owned by a Chinese firm and are worried that Beijing could use the app to collect data about US citizens or push specific narratives to Americans via the app’s recommendation algorithm.
Under the law, the initial deadline for the sell-or-ban rule was this past January, but Trump has extended this deadline multiple times since reentering office, most recently pushing it into January 2026.
English (US) ·