White House and China finalize deal to sell U.S. TikTok business to investors backed by Trump
The United States and China have signed off on a deal that would hand control of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a group of investors backed by President Donald Trump, according to a White House official.
The deal comes just ahead of a deadline the Trump administration had extended several times.
Last month, TikTok CEO Shou Chew told employees that the company’s Beijing-based owner, ByteDance, had signed binding agreements to create a joint venture for the app in the U.S.
The deal, facilitated by the Trump administration, means the U.S. version of TikTok will become majority-owned by a group of investors that includes the American tech giant Oracle, the California-based private equity fund Silver Lake and the United Arab Emirates investment firm MGX.
Trump told reporters last year that the investors involved in the deal are “all very well-known people, very famous people actually, financially.” He touted in September that TikTok will be “American-operated all the way.”
ByteDance will keep a 19.9% stake in the U.S. operation, TikTok said in a December memo.
The joint venture will be governed by a seven-member board of directors, according to a statement Thursday evening from TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.
It will be led by Adam Presser with Chew serving as a director, the statement said. The majority of the members are American, it said.
Americans make up TikTok’s largest user and creator bases, with more than 150 million active users in the country.
The popular short-form video platform has been subject to years of scrutiny across the political aisle in the U.S. over its Chinese ownership. Both Trump and former President Joe Biden had cited national security concerns in their attempts to push for a nationwide ban of the app.
Such a ban almost came to fruition just over a year ago, when the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was supposed to take effect. The bipartisan bill, which was upheld by the Supreme Court, required ByteDance to sell the platform to an American company or face a ban.
The looming threat of a nationwide TikTok shutdown stirred a mass exodus of users who, in fear of losing their audiences and income streams, migrated to other social media platforms, like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Many, to express their spite for U.S. lawmakers, also inundated the Chinese social media app RedNote.
But aside from its briefly going dark on the eve of the ban, TikTok it has remained consistently available to its American users as Trump repeatedly issued executive orders to delay the ban. He extended TikTok’s shutdown deadline four times before he announced a tentative deal between Washington and Beijing in September.
Even after the ban’s initial signing, there were signs that a deal would emerge as popular discontent about the decision surged.
Last January, the Biden White House said it would pass responsibility for its enforcement to Trump’s incoming administration, and congressional leaders who had once championed the ban seemed to shy away from enforcing it, as well.
Trump has also flip-flopped on his attitude toward TikTok. In 2020, during his first term, he signed an executive order to effectively ban it; that order was later halted in court. By 2024, however, he openly voiced his opposition to a TikTok ban and joined the platform in an attempt to reach young voters, even publishing a video promising to “save TikTok.”
