TikTok has finally closed a deal allowing it to remain active in the United States one day before the deadline set by President Donald Trump. The new owners will include US private equity firm Silver Lake, Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence company MGX and Larry Ellison’s Oracle — each with a 15% stake in the joint venture company. The deal marks a major milestone after multiple efforts to ban TikTok over national security concerns in the past five years.
“The majority American owned Joint Venture will operate under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurances for U.S. users,” CNN quoted the group statement as saying on Thursday.
The company added that TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC will secure US user data, apps and the algorithm through data privacy and cybersecurity measures.
Who owns TikTok US?
The joint venture will be led by CEO Adam Presser and Chief Security Officer Will Farrell — both of whom previously led TikTok’s efforts to secure the user data of Americans. It will also be overseen by a board of US and global investors as well as TikTok CEO Shou Chew.
The seven-member board will also include: Oracle Executive Vice President Kenneth Glueck; TPG Global’s senior advisor Timothy Dattels; Mark Dooley, managing director at Susquehanna International Group; Silver Lake Co-CEO Egon Durban, DXC Technology CEO Raul Fernandez; and David Scott, chief strategy and safety officer at MGX.
The new investors will hold a 80.1% stake in the new joint venture while ByteDance retains 19.9% of the company.
A year of negotiations and multiple extensions from Trump
The deal marks the end of years of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. The platform was set to go dark in January 2025 after wide bipartisan majorities 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 to ‘replace’ ByteDance. The blackout lasted merely ours before Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration sought an agreement for the sale of the company.