All the final details still need to be nailed down among several joint venture partners that will include Oracle, investment firm Silver Lake Partners and possibly two billionaires — media mogul Rupert Murdoch and personal computer pioneer Michael Dell. The U.S. administration would not have a stake in the joint venture nor be part of its board, according to a senior White House official.
President Trump is expected to issue an executive order later this week that declares that the terms of the deal meet the security concerns laid out by the law, the senior White House official said. China still needs to sign off on the framework proposal, and any final deal would still require regulatory approval.
Under the current terms of the proposal, the new U.S. joint venture would receive a licensed copy of the recommendation algorithm that keeps TikTok users endlessly scrolling through clips on their smartphones. Oracle would review, monitor and secure U.S. data flowing through the service.
American officials have previously warned that ByteDance’s algorithm is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
“It wouldn’t be in compliance if the algorithm is Chinese. There can’t be any shared algorithm with ByteDance,” said a spokesperson for the House Select Committee on China.
The algorithm has been a central issue in the security debate over TikTok. China previously maintained the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But a U.S. regulation passed with bipartisan support said any divestment of TikTok must mean the platform cuts ties — specifically the algorithm — with ByteDance.
Although the details remain sketchy, a Trump administration official said that the licensed copy will be “retrained” with U.S. data to make sure the system is “behaving appropriately.”
That makes it unclear if the U.S. version of TikTok will look different from what users are seeing in the rest of the world. Any noticeable changes made to a social media platform’s service raises the risk of alienating its audience, said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst for the research firm eMarketer.
“Social media is just as much about the culture as it is the technology, and how users will take to new ownership and potentially a new version of the app is still an open question,” Enberg said.
In a Monday briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the change in control won’t change the experience. “TikTok users in the U.S will be able to see videos posted by users in other countries and vice versa,” Leavitt said.
But Musk made extremely visible changes, including eventually dropping the Twitter brand and changing its name to X. The changes that gradually occur while different data is fed into the U.S. copy of TikTok’s algorithm could be subtle and unnoticeable to most of its audience.
What’s clear, for now, is that both Oracle and Silver Lake will be major players in TikTok’s future in the U.S. if the deal is finalized by the Trump administration.
Founded nearly 50 years ago, Oracle’s success was built on database software that helps manage a wide variety of information crucial to business, and has since expanded into hardware, including data centers that help power artificial intelligence.
ByteDance is expected to have a 20%, or smaller, stake in the U.S. joint venture, whose board will be controlled by the U.S. investors. ByteDance will be represented by one person on the board, but that individual will be excluded from TikTok’s security committee.
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Liedtke reported from San Ramon, California.
