(Dec 19): TikTok’s long-delayed plan to separate from Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd was put in motion Thursday when the video-sharing sensation said it’s being bought by a group of buyers led by Oracle Corp.
TikTok chief executive officer Shou Chew told employees that the company and ByteDance signed binding agreements to create a US joint venture majority-owned by American investors, according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg. Chew wrote that he was “pleased to share some great news” and said agreements with Oracle, Silver Lake Management and MGX have been signed. The deal is expected to close on Jan 22, 2026, though Chew added that “there’s more work to be done” before then.
Chinese regulators have yet to say whether they’ll approve the transaction.
Upon closing, the US JV will operate as an independent entity that will control data protection, content moderation and algorithm security in the country, Chew told employees in the memo. The new US entity will also be “governed by a new seven-member majority-American board of directors”, he added. Oracle shares jumped about 5.2% in early trading on Friday before markets opened.
The memo outlined a deal that matched what the White House announced in September, which was pending approval from China at the time and valued TikTok’s US operations at roughly US$14 billion. Chew’s memo on Thursday did not mention China’s opinion on the transaction, which would wrest some — but not total — control of TikTok US from ByteDance. Under the arrangement, 50% of the investors in TikTok US will be new, with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, an Abu Dhabi-based investment company, each gaining 15% ownership; 30.1% will be held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance.
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The terms outlined in the CEO’s memo appear to leave the door open for ByteDance to potentially retain oversight of key parts of US TikTok, an app used by half the country. Bloomberg News previously reported that the Chinese parent company would retain roughly 50% of the profit from TikTok’s US operations. ByteDance’s involvement has long been a sticking point in negotiations, and has led critics, including members of Trump’s own political party, to argue that the arrangement the White House negotiated may not pass legal muster. The national security law passed and signed under former President Joe Biden mandated that TikTok US and ByteDance have no operational relationship.
ByteDance’s coveted content algorithms are considered central to TikTok’s business. Under the version of the deal recently outlined by the White House, ByteDance is expected to license its artificial intelligence (AI) recommendation technology to the newly created US TikTok entity, which will use the existing algorithm to retrain a new system on US data that is secured by Oracle, TikTok’s cloud partner.
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Oracle’s role as a data security guard has also raised concerns. The arrangement mirrors an earlier TikTok-Oracle collaboration proposed years ago to the US government as a way to solve similar concerns about TikTok’s Chinese ownership. That team-up, called Project Texas, was ultimately rejected by the US government and deemed insufficient to address national security issues.
If finalised, the deal will remove a persistent issue in Beijing-Washington relations and signal progress in broader negotiations between the two countries, which have sparred on trade and other issues.
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 company, 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 extended this deadline multiple times since reentering office, most recently pushing it into January 2026.
For months, as the prospect of a ban under Trump has become less and less likely, TikTok has been operating business as usual and further planting its flag as a dominant cultural force in the US. It has been pushing aggressively into e-commerce and livestream shopping, including partnering with major American tech companies including Amazon.com Inc. The same day that Chew announced an agreement had been reached, TikTok held its first-ever Oscars-style red carpet show, The TikTok Awards, in Los Angeles.
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