TikTok’s parent company ByteDance approved a deal for a new American version of the app with a group of non-Chinese investors, including Oracle, MGX and Silver Lake, after a six-year legal battle.
The new venture, named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, will operate as an independent entity overseen by a seven-member American board of directors. Adam Presser, TikTok’s operations head, was appointed as CEO by the board as one of its first actions.
American investors like Oracle, MGX and Silver Lake own more than 80% of the new venture, while ByteDance retains 19.9%. Other investors include Michael Dell, the tech billionaire behind Dell Technologies, and the Emirati investment firm Vastmere Strategic Investments, among others.
The U.S. TikTok is six years in the making. The app with more than 200 million American users and 7.5 million business accounts was almost banned by Congress. The new deal intends to distance the app from China and address national security concerns that the Chinese government could use the app to surveil American users.
The terms of the U.S. divestment deal were released last month. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew wrote in a memo Dec. 18 that the new venture will be “retraining the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data to ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation.” He also noted that the new leadership would have “ultimate decision-making authority” for reviewing and approving content moderation as it relates to American policy.
The U.S. board of directors includes Chew, Timothy Dattels, Mark Dooley, Silver Lake’s Egon Durban, Raul Fernandez, Kenneth Glueck and MGX’s David Scott.
Will Farrell will join Presser as chief security officer of the new venture, overseeing the platform’s data privacy and cybersecurity program.
The new agreement allows the app to continue operating in the U.S. It was a journey to get to this point as the deadline for a deal was extended four times by the Trump administration.
The threat of a TikTok ban in the U.S. has loomed over the Chinese-owned tech company for years. It started near the end of President Donald Trump’s first term in office, with the then-president signing an executive order in August 2020 banning any transactions between U.S. companies and ByteDance, the social media platform’s Chinese parent company.
When Trump returned to office in 2025, he rang the alarm bells again for a TikTok divestment. The president presented a new deadline for the company to find new American owners. It took until nearly the end of the first year of his second term for the deal to be completed.
American users will still be able to interact with global TikTok creators and operate on a global scale. TikTok global’s U.S. entities will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising and marketing.
