TikTok has entered a new United States venture, according to a memo that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew shared with employees.
In the memo, Chew said the company has signed agreements with Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. He said the deal’s closing date is 22 January.
This comes after Oracle was named as a likely buyer for the social site that has faced legal issues in the U.S. since the start of the year.
TikTok’s troubles began in April 2024 when former President Joe Biden signed a law giving ByteDance nine months to divest U.S. operations.
This meant ByteDance had to sell TikTok to an American company, or have it removed from the U.S. app store.
After this, TikTok went dark for 14 hours on 18 January 2025 after it wasn’t sold.
Trump, who was previously a heavy critic of TikTok during his first term as president, signed many executive orders throughout the year to extend the deadline and save the app from being blocked from U.S. users.
Chew noted that the joint venture would be “majority owned by American investors, governed by a new seven-member majority-American board of directors, and subject to terms that protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.”
A consortium of new U.S. investors will hold 50% of the joint venture, with Oracle, Silver Like and MGX holding 15% each. Just over 30% will be held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance, and almost 20% will be retained by ByteDance, the memo said.
The entity will be in charge of protecting U.S. data, ensuring the security of its algorithm and content moderation.
It will also be responsible for retraining the video app’s core content recommendation algorithm “on U.S. user data to ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” the memo said.
Oracle will serve as the “trusted security partner”, according to the memo.
Oracle shares rose 5% in after-hours trading on Thursday.
Under Trump’s last executive order in September, the deadline was extended by 120 days in order to “permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed,” allowing the deal to be finalised by 23 January.
