TikTok’s parent company finalizes a deal to keep the video-sharing app operating in the US
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TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, said it had finalized a deal on Thursday to set up a US-owned joint venture to avoid a US ban on the short-form video app used by more than 200 million Americans.
The agreement is a milestone for the video-sharing app after years of battles that began in August 2020, when US President Donald Trump first tried without success to block it on the grounds of national security.
The new app will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protection, algorithm security, content moderation and software guarantees for US users,” the company said in a statement Thursday.
The agreement provides for American and international investors, including cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX, to hold an 80.1 percent stake in the new joint venture, while ByteDance will retain 19.9 percent.
A White House official told Reuters that the US and Chinese governments had signed an agreement. China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately comment.
Details of the deal are consistent with those outlined in September, when Trump delayed enforcing a rule that would have shut down the app unless its Chinese owner sold it.
Former TikTok figures Adam Presser and Will Farrell have been named CEO and chief security officer respectively. The joint venture’s board of directors includes TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who will lead TikTok’s global business and strategy.
Hundreds of thousands divided in Congress passed a law (signed by then-president Joe Biden) to ban TikTok in the US if it doesn’t find a new owner instead of China’s ByteDance. The field was supposed to go dark based on a January 2025 legal deadline. It took a few hours.
But on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to keep it in place while his administration sought a deal to sell the company.
The Trump administration extended the deadline mmany times. At the time, Trump himself credited TikTok for helping him win the 2024 election. He has more than 16 million followers on his personal account.
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order detailing the terms of an agreement to sell TikTok’s American operations to a group of stateside investors. Nationally, CBC’s Ashley Fraser breaks down the deal and what it means for the social media algorithm.
The White House launched its own TikTok account last year.
Government of Canada ordered TikTok to close its operations in Canada by November 2024 following the ByteDance review, citing unspecified “national security risks”.
Canada has not banned the app from users.
Law professor Kristen Thomasen says preventing the sharing of unauthorized deepfakes on X may require government legislation, warning that it’s a structural problem that users have limited means of solving.
