TikTok users across the United States may be getting the clearest sign yet that the app isn’t going anywhere. ByteDance has reportedly reached a deal to keep TikTok operating in the country by shifting its U.S. business into a new structure that gives majority control to an investor group led by American firms.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees that the company’s U.S. operations will move under a newly created entity called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. The goal is straightforward: keep TikTok available for its roughly 170 million U.S. users while creating a formal separation between American operations and direct ByteDance control.
Timing is a major part of why this matters. The new arrangement is expected to take effect on January 22, just one day before an executive order expires that had paused enforcement of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. That looming deadline has been a key pressure point for TikTok, as U.S. officials and lawmakers have repeatedly raised concerns about ownership, data security, and potential foreign influence.
According to Chew’s internal memo, the joint venture has signed agreements with three managing investors: Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment company MGX. While the group is widely described as U.S.-led, MGX’s participation means ownership won’t be entirely American. Still, this lineup closely mirrors the sort of framework U.S. officials had previously signaled they could accept during earlier rounds of talks that stalled amid shifting political and regulatory winds.
The reported ownership split provides a clearer picture of how control would be distributed. Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX would collectively hold about 45% of the new U.S. entity. Affiliates of existing ByteDance investors would own around 30.1%, while ByteDance itself would retain a 19.9% stake. TikTok’s U.S. business would also operate under a new board structure with seven directors, with a majority expected to be U.S. nationals—another attempt to address ongoing national security concerns.
One of the biggest sticking points has always been TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, the system that decides what trends, videos, and creators appear in users’ feeds. U.S. officials have long argued that whoever controls the algorithm could potentially shape what Americans see at scale. In his message to staff, Chew said the new U.S. entity will retrain the algorithm using American user data, with the intent of ensuring the feed cannot be manipulated from outside the country.
Exactly how that algorithm retraining will work in practice—and how independent it will truly be from ByteDance’s broader global systems—remains an open question. But the creation of a separate U.S. venture, a new board with expected U.S. majority representation, and a revised approach to algorithm training signals a major effort to meet U.S. regulatory demands while keeping one of the country’s most-used social platforms online.
