TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance has signed a binding agreement with a group of investors, including Larry Ellison-led Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake and AI-focused Abu Dhabi based investment firm MGX to buy 45% of TikTok’s US operations. The new entity formed will have each investor owning 15% of the company while existing ByteDance investors will hold 30% and the original ByteDance company will retain 19.9% of the company.
Under the deal, Chinese-owned ByteDance will have to divest the app’s US operations, where the new entity will oversee data protection, algorithm security and content moderation. This development comes after the US’s data security concerns forced ByteDance to divest its US operations after former US president Joe Biden signed a law forcing ByteDance to divest or sell up.
The US Congress, in 2024, had approved a nationwide ban on TikTok unless ByteDance sold its controlling stake by January 19, 2025. President Donald Trump had extended the deadline five times, which is now January 23, 2026.
TikTok is currently one of the US’s most popular social media sites, with almost 170 million subscribers using the platform. There have been many suitors for the deal, including Elon Musk, Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary, and popular YouTuber MrBeast.
This development ends the year-long legal wrangling between ByteDance and the US government, with ByteDance’s chief executive Shou Zi Chew, repeated assurances on data protection for US users falling on deaf ears.
