TikTok’s New U.S. Venture: What Happened and Why It Matters

After years of legal pressure, ByteDance signed binding agreements in December 2025 to transfer control of TikTok’s United States operations to a new joint venture, named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. The investor group is led by Oracle and also includes Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi‑based MGX; each managing investor will hold roughly 15 percent, affiliates of existing ByteDance investors will retain 30.1 percent, and ByteDance will keep a 19.9 percent stake. The plan is scheduled to close on January 22, 2026, and the platform serves about 170 million American users.

The new U.S. entity will be governed by a seven‑member majority‑American board and will assume responsibility for data protection, content moderation, and software assurance. Oracle will act as the trusted security partner and will host U.S. user data in its cloud while overseeing a recreation of the recommendation algorithm that will be retrained on U.S. data; these measures are intended to eliminate operational ties that raised national security concerns. The arrangement has been structured to satisfy the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act and to meet interagency requirements set out by the White House.

Although the parties have signed binding agreements, Chinese regulatory approval remained unresolved at the time of the announcement, and financial terms were not publicly disclosed. The transaction values the U.S. business at about $14 billion, a figure that reflects both user scale and advertising revenues; if regulators approve, advertisers and creators will need to adapt to new governance and technical checks that could change recommendation behavior. Nevertheless, the deal aims to preserve access to the app for millions of Americans while addressing the government’s security demands.