TikTok has finalized a deal that will allow the popular short-video app to continue operating in the United States, the company announced on Thursday.
The agreement ends a years-long standoff between Washington and Beijing that began during former President Donald Trump’s first term, when he attempted to ban the app over national security concerns.
The platform faced a potential ban in January 2025 if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, did not sell TikTok’s US operations to American investors. Enforcement of the legislation was repeatedly postponed by Trump, and later, under Joe Biden, concerns over data privacy continued to intensify.
At the heart of the dispute was TikTok’s content-recommendation algorithm, which determines what users see on the app. Under the new deal, the algorithm has been licensed to American owners and will now be trained exclusively on US data. Experts say this may produce changes in content recommendations, though the precise impact on TikTok’s 200 million American users remains unclear.
For years, Washington had pressured TikTok to divest its US operations, citing fears that Beijing could access American user data. TikTok and ByteDance consistently denied these claims.
In 2020, Trump first proposed a ban, and the issue gained renewed momentum under Biden. In 2024, a law was passed requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a US ban. A temporary blackout of TikTok in January 2025 lasted 12 to 14 hours before Trump, then president-elect, pledged to reverse it.
In September 2025, Trump announced a deal with China to keep TikTok running in the US. By December, binding agreements were signed with American and global investors to operate TikTok’s US business.
TikTok US Ownership and Structure
The new business, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, will operate independently with a seven-member majority-American board. Adam Presser, formerly of WarnerMedia, has been appointed CEO.
Three managing investors each hold a 15% stake in TikTok’s US operations:
Oracle – responsible for securing US user data and overseeing the retraining of the content algorithm.
Silver Lake – a US tech investment firm with approximately $116bn in assets.
MGX – an Emirati investor in AI and technology.
ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake, while the remaining 35.1% is held by a group of companies, including the family office of tech executive Michael Dell and Vastmere Strategic Investments, an affiliate of Susquehanna International Group. Susquehanna co-founder Jeff Yass, a Trump ally, has personal ties to ByteDance, and managing director Mark Dooley will sit on the new board.
The board also includes TikTok global CEO Shou Zi Chew and executives from Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX.
US President Donald Trump expressed satisfaction with the deal on social media, saying he was “so happy to have helped in saving TikTok.”
