Here’s What You Should Know About the U.S. TikTok Deal

TikTok’s future in the United States has been hanging in the balance for four long years. At the center of it all is one question: can a Chinese-owned company be trusted with the data of more than 150 million Americans?

That concern has driven court battles, political drama, investor bidding wars, and more deadline extensions than most people can keep track of. Earlier this year, Americans even experienced a brief TikTok blackout before the app quietly returned to the App Store and Google Play in February.

Now, after the fourth extension of the TikTok ban deadline by President Donald Trump, the waiting appears to be over. Last week, TikTok officially signed a deal that will transfer partial ownership of its U.S. business to an American investor group. The agreement follows Trump’s executive order from three months ago approving the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations.

A week before the deal was signed, Trump publicly confirmed that Chinese President Xi Jinping had given his approval for the arrangement. ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, also announced that it would cooperate to keep the platform available for American users.

The deal is expected to close on January 22, 2026.

Who Will Own TikTok in the U.S. Now?

Under the new structure, TikTok’s U.S. operations will be managed by a newly created company called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. According to internal documents viewed by TechCrunch, ownership will be split primarily between American investors and ByteDance.

Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and investment firm MGX will together control about 45% of the U.S. business. ByteDance will retain just under 20%, while other minority stakeholders will make up the rest. TikTok U.S. is currently valued at around $14 billion, according to sources cited by Axios and Vice President JD Vance.

Oracle will play a central role in the new arrangement. It will serve as TikTok’s “trusted security partner,” overseeing data protection, content moderation, software assurance, and compliance with national security requirements. The company already hosts TikTok’s U.S. user data and had attempted to buy the platform during Trump’s first term in 2020.

One of the most sensitive parts of the deal involves TikTok’s recommendation algorithm. Under the agreement, Oracle will replicate and secure a U.S.-based version of the algorithm. ByteDance will lease the technology, but it will have no access to U.S. user data and no control over the U.S. version of the algorithm once the deal is finalized.

What This Means for U.S. TikTok Users

Here’s the part that affects everyday users the most: the current TikTok app in the U.S. will eventually be replaced.

Bloomberg reports that once the transaction closes, TikTok’s existing U.S. app will be discontinued, and users will be required to transition to a new platform operated under the U.S. ownership structure. What this new version will look like, what features might change, and how smoothly that transition will happen remain unclear.

For now, Americans can keep using TikTok as usual, but significant changes are coming behind the scenes.

How We Got Here: A Very Long Road

This saga started back in August 2020, when then-President Trump issued an executive order to ban transactions with ByteDance over national security concerns. His administration attempted to force a sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations, with Microsoft, Oracle, and Walmart emerging as early bidders.

A U.S. judge blocked the order, keeping TikTok alive while lawsuits dragged on.

The issue reignited during the Biden administration. After Congress passed legislation targeting TikTok, President Biden signed it into law. TikTok responded by suing the U.S. government, arguing the ban violated the First Amendment rights of both the company and its American users.

Fast-forward to Trump’s second term, and his position shifted dramatically. Instead of pushing for an outright ban, he began advocating for a shared ownership model between ByteDance and American companies.

That sparked a fierce investor race. Multiple groups entered the bidding, including Frank McCourt’s “People’s Bid for TikTok,” Jesse Tinsley’s American Investor Consortium, and a long list of tech giants and billionaires from Amazon and Microsoft to MrBeast and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

After months of negotiations and diplomatic back-and-forth between Washington and Beijing, the current deal finally emerged.

The Takeaway

This deal doesn’t just decide TikTok’s ownership, it redraws the future of how global tech platforms operate under political pressure.

For the U.S. government, it represents a rare attempt to force structural change inside one of the world’s biggest social platforms without fully banning it. For ByteDance, it’s a compromise that allows TikTok to survive in America while surrendering meaningful control. For users, it means the app they love is about to quietly transform into something new, even if the logo stays the same.

Whether this becomes a model for regulating foreign tech companies or simply the most complicated business divorce in internet history remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: TikTok in the U.S. will never quite be the same again.