After years of Washington melodrama – including laws, deadlines, political posturing and threats from President Trump – TikTok has officially closed a deal to keep scrolling in the U.S. instead of disappearing forever. This is, undoubtedly, great news to teens all over the country. The app’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, agreed to restructure its U.S. business into a new joint venture that satisfies lawmakers’ national-security freakouts.
The ownership breakdown…
- Oracle — 15% (they will store the data)
- Silver Lake — 15%
- MGX — 15%
- Other investors (including Michael Dell’s family office and others) — part of the remaining American-led 80.1% block
- ByteDance — still clinging to 19.9% — just under the limit to avoid being labeled foreign adversary-controlled.
So while TikTok now has a mostly American board and U.S. data protections in place to soothe Capitol Hill, the original Chinese owner still owns a meaningful slice – and will be licensing the algorithm back to the new entity.
So in the end…TikTok dodged the ban, Americans still get their viral dances and stupid challenges, and politicians get to pretend they saved the day.