TikTok has finalized agreements with Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX to house its U.S. operations within a new joint venture named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. The deal, which is set to close on January 22nd, represents the final step in meeting a national security law requiring ByteDance to divest its U.S. assets or face an effective ban under a provision upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this year.
In a memo obtained by media outlets, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew outlined that the joint venture will be majority-owned by American investors and governed by a seven-member board with significant U.S. leadership. The structure allocates 50% of the venture to a new investor consortium, including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX (each holding 15%), while existing ByteDance affiliates retain just over 30%. ByteDance itself will maintain nearly 20% ownership.
The U.S. joint venture will oversee critical responsibilities for American users, including data protection, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurance. Chew emphasized that the entity will “ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation” through retraining of TikTok’s algorithm on U.S. user data. Oracle will serve as the designated security partner to audit compliance with national security terms, and all U.S. user data will remain stored locally within an Oracle-managed system.
TikTok stated that users and advertisers will experience “no impact” from the transition, maintaining current functionality while addressing longstanding concerns about the platform’s algorithm—previously flagged by American officials as vulnerable to potential manipulation by Chinese authorities under existing regulatory frameworks.