TikTok stays open in U.S. with new joint venture
It’s official – TikTok is here to stay in the U.S.
The immensely popular short-form video platform has established a new entity called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC in compliance with an executive order signed Sept. 25, 2025 by President Donald Trump. That order said enforcement of a previous order requiring TikTok‘s Chinese parent company ByteDance to find a new owner for its U.S. business by Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025 had been extended until Jan. 23, 2026.
[READ MORE: Trump okays deal to keep TikTok open in U.S.; extends deadline to 2026]
As previously reported, TikTok USDS Joint Venture has three managing investors: Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi-based MGX investment fund, each holding 15%.
Other investors are Dell Family Office, the investment firm of Michael Dell, founder, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies; Vastmere Strategic Investments, LLC, an affiliate of Susquehanna International Group; Alpha Wave Partners; Revolution; Merritt Way, controlled and managed by partners of Dragoneer; Via Nova, an affiliate of General Atlantic; Virgo LI Inc., investment arm of a foundation established by Internet entrepreneurs Yuri and Julia Milner in support of science; and NJJ Capital, the family office of Xavier Niel, a French telecommunications entrepreneur.
ByteDance will retain a 19.9% stake in the joint venture. Previous media reports indicated the joint venture would value TikTok’s U.S. business at approximately $14 billion, but no official financial figure has been released.
This is the deal that Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping reportedly gave verbal approval to in September 2025, although China has never publicly acknowledged any support of it. Oracle has been storing TikTok’s U.S. data on its servers since 2022.
According to the joint venture, U.S. user data will be protected in Oracle's secure U.S. cloud environment, and it will operate a data privacy and cybersecurity program that is audited and certified by third-party cybersecurity experts.
The program will adhere to major industry standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) CSF and 800-53 and ISO 27001, as well as the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Security Requirements for Restricted Transactions.
In addition, the joint venture will retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data. The content recommendation algorithm will also be secured in Oracle's U.S. cloud environment.
U.S. apps will be secured through software assurance protocols, and the joint venture will review and validate source code on an ongoing basis, assisted by Oracle acting as a trusted security partner. The joint venture will have decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and content moderation.
The global TikTok organization’s U.S. entities will manage global product interoperability and select commercial activities including e-commerce, advertising and marketing.
A seven-member, American-dominated board of directors will govern the joint venture. Members include TikTok CEO Shou Chew and Executive VP in the Oracle office of the CEO Kenneth Gluck. See the full list of board members and other details about the agreement here.
TikTok takes winding path to remaining open in U.S.
The now ended saga of whether TikTok would continue to operate in the U.S. dated back to the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which was signed by President Biden in April 2024 in response to longstanding concerns over possible ties between TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party and possible risks to U.S. user privacy (ByteDance and TikTok have publicly denied the validity of these concerns).
Due to this legislation, which makes it unlawful for U.S. companies to distribute, maintain or update TikTok unless U. S. operation of the Chinese-owned platform is severed from Chinese control, TikTok briefly went dark in the U.S. during the weekend of Jan. 18-19.
In February 2025, an executive order from the White House mandated the federal government to establish a sovereign wealth fund, which uses government assets to invest in global markets, companies, real estate and private equity and could be used for the U.S. government to partially or fully finance a TikTok acquisition.
