A little more than one week ago, TikTok stepped on to US shores as a naturalized citizen. Ever since, the video app has been fighting for its life. TikTok's calamitous emigration began on 22 January when its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, finalized a deal to sell the app to a group of US investors, among them the business software giant Oracle.
Half of the new TikTok U.S. joint venture will be owned by a consortium of investors among them Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX will each hold a 15% share. Another 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors and 19.9% will be retained by the China-based ByteDance, according to the memo. The U.S. venture will have a new, seven-member majority-American board of directors, the memo said.
SAN FRANCISCO -- TikTok has signed a deal to sell its U.S. business to three American investors - Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX - ensuring the popular social video platform can continue operating in the United States. The deal is expected to close on Jan. 22, according to an internal memo seen by The Associated Press.
Speaking on CBS's Face the Nation, Bessent said the transaction would be formally endorsed by President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping during a bilateral meeting in Korea later this week. "We reached a final deal on TikTok," Bessent said. "We reached it in Madrid, and I believe all the details are ironed out. It will be for the two leaders to consummate that transaction."
Trump said Oracle and its CEO, Larry Ellison, will be part of the deal. Analysts had previously estimated that TikTok was worth significantly more. China and TikTok have yet to comment on where things stand. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Oracle would "audit" TikTok's algorithm and oversee its retraining. Control of the algorithm has long been a major sticking point in any sale.
We've finally got a TikTok deal. The specifics of it are another question. President Donald Trump signed an executive order blessing TikTok's sale for roughly $14 billion, writes BI's Dan Whateley. The deal ends the threat of the divest-or-ban law hanging over the app's head since the beginning of the year. TikTok's new US era doesn't mean the questions surrounding its future will stop. In fact, Trump's executive order led to many more questions.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday declaring that his plan to sell Chinese-owned TikTok's U.S. operations to U.S. and global investors will address the national security requirements in a 2024 law. The new U.S. company will be valued at around $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance said, putting a price tag on the popular short video app far below some analyst estimates.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Thursday giving his approval for a sale of TikTok's US business to a buyer consortium. Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the deal would value TikTok US at $14 billion. The exact make-up of the new consortium has not yet been revealed. Trump said on Thursday that Oracle and Larry Ellison would be part of the new ownership.
we have seen a tech titan gut a once-great newspaper in an apparent act of capitulation to the commander in chief, government accounts gleefully spreading hateful memes on X (the far-right platform owned by a billionaire tech oligarch), a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump against The New York Times (and quickly dismissed by the judge as "superfluous"), and, of course, the assault on free speech carried out by Trump's Federal Communications Commission chairman.
