ByteDance will keep 19.9% of TikTok’s U.S. business. The rest goes to a group of majority-American investors.
TikTok announced the deal on Friday, saying it has formed a joint venture, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, to keep the app running in the United States. The company said the venture was set up under the executive order President Donald Trump signed in September 2025. The Chinese government has not commented publicly on the agreement.
TikTok described the new company as “majority American owned” and said it will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security.” Those cover data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for U.S. users.
What changes for users
U.S. user data will sit in Oracle’s secure U.S. cloud environment. TikTok’s recommendation algorithm will be retrained and updated using only users in the country, and it will also be secured on Oracle’s cloud. The venture is also expected to run a data privacy and cybersecurity program that third-party experts will audit and certify. TikTok said the program will follow standards including NIST CSF and 800-53, ISO 27001 and the CISA Security Requirements for Restricted Transactions.
The safeguards extend to CapCut, Lemon8 and TikTok’s other U.S. apps and websites. TikTok has over 200 million American users and 7.5 million businesses on it.
The venture has also changed its privacy policy. Depending on device permissions, it can now collect a user’s precise geolocation rather than just an approximate one. The updated terms also cover information gathered when people use its AI tools, “including prompts, questions, files, and other types of information that you submit to our AI-powered interfaces, as well as the responses they generate.”
Trump’s reaction and the timeline
Trump praised the deal on Truth Social, saying the company would now be owned by a “group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World.” He thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping for working with his administration and “ultimately, approving the Deal.”
The announcement came about a month after reports that TikTok had signed an agreement to create the venture. Under the September order, the attorney general was blocked from enforcing the national security law for 120 days to “permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed.” That put the deadline at January 23, 2026.
TikTok was briefly banned a year ago, when a federal law signed by former President Joe Biden took effect. Passed in April 2024, it required the service to be available under American ownership or another entity, citing national security concerns over its Chinese owner, ByteDance. Lawmakers have argued that Beijing could force the company to hand over U.S. users’ data. TikTok and ByteDance have consistently denied that. India banned TikTok outright in June 2020, and Canada ordered it to dissolve its operations there in late 2024.
