TikTok is moving to spin off its U.S. operations into a separate entity controlled by a group of primarily American investors backed by President Donald Trump, the company announced Thursday.
The social media app, known for its short-form video content, will now be owned in the United States by TikTok U.S. Data Security Joint Venture LLC. The app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, will retain a 19.9% stake in the joint venture, while the majority will be held by American investors.
The announcement comes one month after TikTok inked the deal to sell its U.S. entity to the joint venture group. On Thursday, the White House confirmed that the deal had been finalized before TikTok made its public announcement.
Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX each own 15% as the three managing investors. Among the other investors is the personal investment firm of Dell CEO Michael Dell, who financially backed the so-called Trump Accounts reserved for U.S. children born between 2025 and 2028. Larry Ellison, another Trump ally, leads Oracle.
The newly announced TikTok-U.S. joint venture will be led by Adam Presser, CEO, and Will Farrell, Chief Security Officer, both of whom previously held positions at TikTok.
Filling the joint venture’s seven-member, majority-American board of directors are: TikTok CEO Shou Chew, TPG Global senior adviser Timothy Dattels, Susquehanna International Group managing director Mark Dooley, Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban, DXC Technology CEO Raul Fernandez, Oracle Executive Vice President Kenneth Glueck, and MGX chief strategy and safety officer David Scott.
In September, Trump signed an executive order to keep TikTok operating in the United States, as the app faced a deadline to divest from ByteDance. Trump repeatedly pushed the deadline back via executive action.
Given the platform’s national security implications of being owned by a Chinese company, it has been a particular concern to the federal government for years.
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Congress passed a bipartisan bill to ban TikTok in the U.S. if ByteDance didn’t sell it off to an American company. The law caused the app to briefly shut down last January, but Trump issued an executive order to temporarily delay the ban on his first day back in office.
The new deal is unlikely to change the average TikTok user’s experience, but it does mean more data security and less foreign manipulation for U.S. users. Oracle is providing much of the data security, while the two other managing investors are taking key leadership roles in the joint operation.
