President Donald Trump is expected to sign a deal on Thursday that would facilitate the sale of TikTok’s to a group of American investors. Once the deal is implemented, TikTok’s U.S. operations will be taken over by a new joint-venture company.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that trade negotiators from the U.S. and China agreed on a “framework” for the deal that would transition TikTok to U.S.-controlled ownership, though specifics other than likely investors have not been mentioned.
According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Americans will hold six of seven board seats for TikTok’s U.S. entity as part of the deal. Oracle could take over the company’s data and privacy and store data across its facilities in the U.S., preventing access from China.
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Oracle is also among investors that will hold a roughly 80% stake in the company. Other investors include venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and private equity firm Silver Lake.
ByteDance’s existing U.S. investors, including Susquehanna International, KKR and General Atlantic, are also expected to be part of the controlling group, while Chinese shareholders will hold the remaining 20% of shares. Trump has also suggested Lachlan Murdoch, billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s heir, might also be tied to the deal, adding, “Rupert is probably going to be in the group, I think they’re going to be in the group.”
Leavitt also mentioned that the algorithm “will also be controlled by America,” stressing that the administration views the arrangement as a safeguard against possible Chinese influence on the platform’s recommendation system.
READ: Trump announces Tiktok deal, extends deadline (
Trump thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping for “the TikTok approval” last week, indicating they made “progress on many very important issues” in a recent phone call. While China’s foreign ministry, in a follow-up statement to Trump’s call with Xi, did not explicitly say whether Xi had approved the deal, it noted that the Chinese government “respects corporate decisions and welcomes business negotiations that follow market rules and produce solutions consistent with Chinese laws and balanced interests.” Xi also requested Trump to avoid imposing “unilateral trade restrictions” on China, according to the statement.
TikTok is being divested from ByteDance in order to comply with a bipartisan law passed in 2024, which sought to ban TikTok if it wasn’t sold to U.S.-based owners this year. While the app was briefly shut down for a period of hours in January, it eventually came back up and Trump extended the deadline for its sale or ban, multiple times.