The company’s CEO Shou Zi Chew stated in the memo that ByteDance and TikTok have signed binding agreements with the three investors
TikTok has signed an agreement to sell its operation in the United States to three North American investors – Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX -, ensuring that the popular social video platform will continue to operate in the country.
The agreement should be completed on January 22, according to an internal memo to which the Associated Press had access.
The company’s CEO Shou Zi Chew stated in the memo that ByteDance and TikTok have signed binding agreements with the three investors.
Half of the new joint venture of TikTok in the US will be owned by a consortium of investors – Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX will each hold a 15% stake. Another 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors and 19.9% will be held by China-based ByteDance, according to the memo.
A joint venture in the US will have a new Board of Directors made up of seven members, the majority of whom are North Americans, the memo said.
It will also be subject to terms that “protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.” US user data will be stored locally on a system operated by Oracle.
TikTok’s algorithm — the secret sauce that powers its addictive video feed — will be retrained based on US user data to “ensure the content feed is free from external manipulation,” the memo said.
A joint venture North American will also oversee content moderation and policies within the country.
The deal marks the end of years of uncertainty over the video-sharing platform’s fate in the United States. After a large bipartisan majority in Congress passed – and President Joe Biden signed – a law that would ban TikTok in the US if it did not find a new owner in place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was on track to be shut down by the law’s January 2025 deadline.
For several hours, that’s what happened. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration tried to reach a deal to sell the company.
Three more executive orders followed as Trump, without a clear legal basis, continued to extend the deadline for a TikTok deal.
The second was in April, when White House officials believed they were close to a deal to spin TikTok into a new U.S.-owned company, which fell through after China backed down following Trump’s tariff announcement.
The third came in June, followed by another in September, which Trump said would allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States in a way that addresses national security concerns.
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