TikTok offices in Culver City, California on September 30, 2025. The deal to sell the American part of the company to a group of American investors was signed on December 18.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
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Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
TikTok has signed an agreement to spin off its US operations to a group controlled primarily by US investors, including software giant Oracle, a company run by Trump ally Larry Ellison.
TikTok's hyper-engaging algorithm and the massive amount of data the app has collected on millions of Americans will be overseen by a new US organization. According to the agreement, TikTok's American algorithm will be retrained only on American data. Content moderation decisions will be made by a new body in the United States.
However, the algorithm will still be owned by Beijing-based ByteDance and updated with the blessing of U.S. auditors, according to two people familiar with the deal who were not authorized to speak publicly.
“With the American majority moderating content, concerns about foreign propaganda appear to have diminished,” said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University who studies regulation of new technologies. “But it is possible that US TikTok will end up censoring or hiding speech that is allowed on TikTok's global platform. I hope that the American content moderation team will allow speech that may not please American owners.”
Under the terms of the sale, half of the new company that will control the US version of TikTok will be owned by consortium of investors including Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake and United Arab Emirates government-backed investment firm MGX. The three will control 45% of TikTok's new US division.
Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX did not respond to requests for comment.
About a third of the newly created TikTok will be owned by existing investors in ByteDance, the video app's Chinese parent company. And about 20% will remain with ByteDance.
According to the memo that was released, a seven-member board of directors, most of whom are American, will oversee the new organization. first reported from Axios.
The deal caps more than five years of growing pressure from Washington, where bipartisan concerns about TikTok's ties to China prompted Congress to pass legislation in 2024 that would have banned the app unless it was sold.
The law was upheld by the Supreme Court in January. For months, TikTok was technically operating in violation of federal law, but Trump released flurry of executive actions delay enforcement of a law that would ban the popular video app.
The White House declined to comment.
TikTok has about 2 billion users worldwide, and less than 10% of its global users live in the United States.
The new US organization overseeing the US version creates an interesting situation for the viral video app: one version of the service will be run by a US-backed company, with extra checks and balances over content flows and data security, while a second version of the app, run entirely by ByteDance, will be available to the rest of the world.
The deal would be a major win for Larry Ellison, expanding his family's influence into new corners of American media and entertainment.
Ellison is a major sponsor of Paramount Skydance, a deal that was struck completed this year.
His son David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, has achieved success. hostile offer take over Warner Bros. Discovery, just as streaming giant Netflix made its own bid that top Warner officials have approved.
