TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees on Thursday that the company’s US operations will be housed in a new joint venture.
The entity is named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, according to a memo sent by Chew and obtained by CNBC. As part of the joint venture, Chew said the company has signed agreements with the three managing investors: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. He said that the deal’s “closing date” is January 22.
Under a national security law, which the Supreme Court upheld in January, China-based ByteDance was required to divest TikTok’s US operations or face an effective ban in the country.
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In September, President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving a proposed deal that would keep TikTok operational in the US by meeting the requirements of a law originally signed by former President Joe Biden.
Chew noted that the new TikTok 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 US national security.”
The US joint venture will be 50 per cent held by a consortium of new investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, with 15 per cent each. Just over 30 per cent will be held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance, and almost 20 per cent will be retained by ByteDance, the memo said.
The TikTok chief said the entity will be responsible for protecting US data, ensuring the security of its prized algorithm, content moderation and “software assurance.”
In addition to being an investor, Oracle will serve as the “trusted security partner” in charge of auditing and validating that it complies with “agreed upon National Security Terms,” the memo said. Sensitive US data will be stored in Oracle’s U.S.-based cloud computing data centers, Chew wrote.
Oracle shares were up 5 per cent in after-hours trading on Thursday.
The new TikTok entity will also be tasked with 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.
Chew noted that TikTok global US entities “will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.”
Under Trump’s executive order in September, the attorney general was blocked from enforcing the national security law for a 120-day period in order to “permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed,” allowing the deal to finalise by January 23.
President Trump said in September that Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to move forward with the proposal. Vice President JD Vance noted that there was “some resistance” from the Chinese government to support the deal that he said valued TikTok’s US business at $14 billion.
ByteDance said in a statement in September that it would “work in accordance with applicable laws to ensure TikTok remains available to American users through TikTok US”.
“We thank President Xi Jinping and President Donald J. Trump for their efforts to preserve TikTok in the United States,” ByteDance said at the time.
