After months of tense negotiations, shifting deadlines, and high-stakes political drama, the United States is on the cusp of reshaping the future of TikTok for its 170 million American users. On Monday, September 22, 2025, the White House announced the basic structure of a deal that would move TikTok’s U.S. operations into a new joint venture, with Oracle and Silver Lake Partners leading the charge. The move comes after a 2024 law required ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban—an ultimatum that has hung over the wildly popular video platform for more than a year.
Under the proposed deal, Oracle—one of Silicon Valley’s most storied firms—will serve as the security provider for TikTok’s American operations, overseeing everything from the app’s prized recommendation algorithm to the security of user data. As reported by the Associated Press, Oracle, alongside Silver Lake Partners and potentially high-profile investors such as media mogul Rupert Murdoch and tech pioneer Michael Dell, will form the backbone of the U.S. joint venture. The government itself will take a hands-off approach: it will neither have a stake in the new company nor claim any seats on its board, a senior White House official confirmed to reporters.
“It’s going to be continuously monitored as it operates to ensure that it’s behaving appropriately, right, that it’s not being used for any kind of malicious purpose, and that it’s not being unduly influenced,” a White House official told reporters, according to CBS News. This oversight is designed to address long-standing national security concerns that have fueled bipartisan calls in Congress to force ByteDance out of the American market.
The heart of the controversy has always been TikTok’s algorithm—the sophisticated, closely guarded code that keeps users glued to their screens. American officials have repeatedly warned that ByteDance’s control over the algorithm could allow Chinese authorities to shape content in ways that are hard to detect or counter. To comply with U.S. law, the proposal will see the American joint venture receive a licensed copy of the recommendation algorithm. This copy will be “retrained” with U.S. data to ensure it operates independently and, as a White House official put it, “is behaving appropriately.” However, whether this retrained algorithm will noticeably alter the TikTok experience for U.S. users remains an open question. Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with eMarketer, told the Associated Press that “social media is just as much about the culture as it is the technology, and how users will take to new ownership and potentially a new version of the app is still an open question.”
Despite the significant changes behind the scenes, the White House has been quick to assure users that the core TikTok experience will remain intact. “TikTok users in the U.S. will be able to see videos posted by users in other countries and vice versa,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a Monday briefing, as reported by the Associated Press. This continuity, officials hope, will help stave off the kind of backlash that followed Elon Musk’s high-profile overhaul of Twitter in 2022.
The deal’s path to completion, however, is not without obstacles. While the White House expressed confidence that China has approved the framework—citing supportive statements from Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs—Chinese regulatory approval is still required, including the issuance of an export license for the algorithm. The joint venture must also clear U.S. regulatory and antitrust reviews before the sale can be finalized. According to NPR, the U.S. government will not hold any ownership stake in the new entity, a structure designed to comply with the 2024 law and to sidestep potential political entanglements.
ByteDance’s influence in the new joint venture will be sharply reduced, with its ownership capped at less than 20%. ByteDance will have just one representative on the joint venture’s board, and that individual will be excluded from any security-related committees, according to the Associated Press. This arrangement, officials say, is critical to ensuring that the U.S. version of TikTok operates independently from its Chinese parent.
President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order later this week, affirming that the terms of the deal satisfy America’s national security interests and extending the enforcement pause on the TikTok ban for another 120 days. This would mark the fifth such pause, as Trump has repeatedly delayed enforcement while negotiations continued. Congress, which passed the divestment law as part of a foreign aid package in April 2024, may still need to sign off on the final deal.
The list of potential U.S. investors reads like a who’s who of American business. In addition to Oracle and Silver Lake, names floated include Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, as well as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. According to CBS News, “there has been an overwhelming interest in this project” from “household” names Americans would recognize. Trump, for his part, has openly courted investors who are, in his words, “patriotic” and “love America.”
Oracle’s role in the deal is especially notable. The company, founded nearly 50 years ago by Larry Ellison, has evolved from a database software pioneer to a major force in cloud computing and data security. Ellison, who remains Oracle’s chairman and chief technology officer, boasts a personal fortune estimated at $390 billion. His family’s influence extends into media as well—his son, David Ellison, is the chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, which owns CBS. As the Associated Press notes, Ellison could soon become a behind-the-scenes power broker in both tech and media.
Silver Lake Partners, meanwhile, brings a long history of big-ticket tech investments, including buyouts of Dell Computer and Skype. Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computer, is among those reportedly interested in joining the TikTok venture. Other global investors who already own stakes in ByteDance may also participate, according to a White House official cited by NPR.
The value of the deal is expected to reach “many billions of dollars” once fully assessed, a senior White House official told Reuters. But the road to this point has not been smooth. Trump’s repeated extensions of the enforcement deadline—sometimes without clear legal authority—have put Congress in a tricky position, balancing demands for action with deference to the president’s strategy. The administration has been quick to frame the deal as a win for U.S. economic and national security interests, with one official telling Reuters, “This is a problem that the Biden administration failed to solve. President Trump has, instead, tackled this issue and is going to solve it.”
For now, TikTok’s American users can breathe a sigh of relief. The app that has become a cultural phenomenon—and, by Trump’s own admission, a potent political tool—looks set to remain available in the U.S., albeit under new management. What remains to be seen is whether the changes behind the scenes will keep TikTok as addictive, influential, and uniquely American as ever.
