By Catherine Yang

Four months after President Donald Trump issued an executive order for the United States to acquire TikTok from China-based ByteDance, a deal has been finalized, establishing a joint venture with American companies taking the lead on data and security.

ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of the U.S. app, then called Musical.ly, triggered a yearslong investigation and efforts by three U.S. administrations to require ByteDance to divest of TikTok over national security concerns tied to the Chinese communist regime’s intelligence-sharing laws.

The deal, finalized on Jan. 22, establishes the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, which is responsible for securing U.S. data and the app algorithms. Other apps owned by ByteDance, such as CapCut and Lemon8, will fall under the same requirements.

Who Runs and Owns TikTok Now?

The deal creates a seven-member board of directors to govern the joint venture, according to the Jan. 22 deal announcement.

The directors include TikTok CEO Shou Chew; Timothy Dattels, a senior adviser at asset manager TPG Global, where he previously chaired the Asia division and was a member of the executive committee; Mark Dooley, managing director at trading giant Susquehanna International Group; Egon Durban, co-CEO of private equity firm Silver Lake; and Oracle executive Kenneth Glueck, who heads the tech giant’s global corporate affairs and communications and advises the CEO on global strategy and policy.

The two other board members are Raul Fernandez, who will serve as independent director and chair of the joint venture’s security committee, and David Scott, who will also serve on the security committee. Fernandez is the president and CEO of IT consultancy DXC Technology, and Scott is the chief strategy and safety officer at tech investment firm MGX.

The board appointed Adam Presser as CEO of the TikTok USDS Joint Venture and Will Farrell as chief security officer. Presser previously served as TikTok’s global head of Operations and Trust & Safety and as an executive in WarnerMedia, including heading its China division. Farrell previously served as global head of business operations and protection for TikTok and has a cybersecurity background with 16 years at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Managing investors Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX each hold 15 percent of the venture. ByteDance is retaining a 19.9 percent stake in the joint venture.

The other investors are: Michael Dell’s investment firm, Dell Family Office; Vastmere Strategic Investments, LLC, an affiliate of Susquehanna International Group; Alpha Wave Partners; Revolution; Merritt Way; Via Nova; Virgo LI, Inc.; and NJJ Capital, the family office of French investor Xavier Niel.

Why Does the US Need to Own TikTok?

Congress passed a law in 2024 requiring apps owned or controlled by foreign adversaries to sever that connection in order to operate in the United States, singling out ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok.

ByteDance had argued it was not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and sought for years to convince the U.S. government to accept an alternative to divestment. Still, U.S. officials had said that because the Chinese regime has enacted laws to require all entities operating in China to assist with the regime’s data and intelligence collection on demand, a Chinese-based entity such as ByteDance cannot reasonably make security guarantees.

Then-President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act into law in April 2024, triggering a countdown for ByteDance to divest of the popular social media app by the end of Biden’s term. ByteDance took the government to court, which extended the deadline so as to give Trump, as the incoming president, a say over the fate of the app.

ByteDance maintained that Beijing would not allow it to sell the app to a foreign entity, a point that proponents of divestment took to mean that the regime did have some control over operations involving TikTok. Trump delayed the divestment deadline several times to prevent TikTok from going dark, and in September 2025, he announced that he had spoken to CCP leader Xi Jinping, who agreed to allow ByteDance to sell to a U.S. owner.

Will the App Change?

White House officials have said there will be no interruption to service. The purpose of the joint venture is to adhere to national security mandates as set out in the 2024 law, and the new group will be responsible for creating safeguards for U.S. users.

Proponents of divestment had raised concerns about content in addition to data security, and management of TikTok’s famously addictive, infamously opaque algorithm had been a sticking point in the deal. Researchers had found that the app tended to suppress content critical of the CCP’s human rights abuses, for example, raising concerns that other forms of content manipulation could occur and be difficult to detect.

The joint venture will be responsible for training, testing, and updating the algorithm, which is to be secured by Oracle. Oracle will serve as the venture’s Trusted Security Partner and will also play a part in the ongoing review of the app’s source code.

TikTok also faces several lawsuits related to harm to minors, with plaintiffs arguing the app targets young users with disproportionately negative content, to which the app has responded that it implements content moderation and safeguards.

The new joint venture will also have “decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and content moderation,” according to the Jan. 22 deal announcement.

Officials have highlighted that the deal will require Oracle to secure U.S. data on U.S. soil, but this has been TikTok’s practice even under ByteDance ownership. Cybersecurity experts who advised lawmakers and officials had pointed out that storage of data in a specific location does not preclude access to that data during transfer.

However, the joint venture will create a data privacy and cybersecurity program to be audited and certified by third-party security experts, a move that ByteDance had previously proposed as an alternative to divestment.

Lawmakers have said they will review the deal to ensure adherence to the 2024 law, and the House Select Committee on the CCP has said it plans to hold a hearing with the leaders of the new joint venture on a date that has yet to be scheduled.