TikTok signs deal to form U.S. unit with American investors

TikTok announced on Dec. 18, 2025 that it had signed binding agreements with three U.S. investors—Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX—to form a new TikTok U.S. joint venture that will hold a majority stake in the U.S. operation and allow the platform to continue serving American users. The deal is expected to close on Jan. 22, according to an internal memo. The memo said ByteDance and TikTok signed the binding agreements with the consortium, and it noted that CEO Shou Zi Chew confirmed the arrangement to employees.

Under the terms, the investor group will own 45% of the new venture, with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX each taking a 15% stake. ByteDance will own 19.9%, and affiliates of existing ByteDance investors will hold 30.1%. The U.S. venture will have a seven-member board of directors, a majority of whom will be American. It will be governed by terms designed to protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security. U.S. user data will be stored locally in a system run by Oracle, and TikTok’s recommendation algorithm will be retrained on U.S. user data to reduce exposure to outside manipulation. The venture will oversee content moderation and policies within the United States.

Analysts and policymakers have long highlighted the algorithm as a core security concern for TikTok. U.S. officials have warned that ByteDance’s control of the data and the algorithm could be leveraged by Chinese authorities to influence content, a central topic in the platform’s national-security debate. The regulatory framework surrounding divestiture has argued that any sale should separate the platform’s data and, in many formulations, the algorithm from ByteDance.

The deal arrives after years of questions about TikTok’s fate in the United States. Congress passed bipartisan legislation that would ban TikTok in the United States unless a sale or divestiture occurred, and the White House under President Biden signed a law with similar implications if a U.S.-based buyer was not found. The executive branch under former President Donald Trump issued a series of orders to keep the platform operating while talks continued, extending deadlines for a sale; subsequent administrations continued to pursue a path that would address security concerns while allowing TikTok to remain accessible in the United States. TikTok has more than 170 million users in the United States, underscoring the platform’s significance for American users and advertisers.

The arrangement represents a potential path forward that gives U.S. regulators a clearer governance framework for data localization, content moderation, and algorithm oversight, while preserving a stake for ByteDance and ensuring ongoing collaboration with the platform’s global owners. Industry observers will watch how the seven-member board, the data safeguards, and the algorithm retraining are implemented in practice as the deal moves toward closing later this month.