Bloomberg reports that there is a new plan that could let TikTok, a popular video-sharing software, keep working in the United States. The blueprint says that a group of well-known American investors, such as Oracle Corp., Andreessen Horowitz, and the private equity firm Silver Lake Management LLC, will take over TikTok’s U.S. operations.
This change comes after months of friction and a long-standing request from the U.S. for an American company to run TikTok’s U.S. business because of national security concerns. After two days of talks in Spain, high-ranking officials from both China and the U.S. allegedly agreed on the revised proposal. It was made public on Monday, September 15. On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are supposed to talk about the framework.
The proposed agreement is in line with a U.S. national security law from 2024 that said TikTok had to either give its operations to American investors or be banned. The new proposal calls for the creation of a U.S. counterpart of TikTok, with the new American investors owning most of it. This would mean that ByteDance, the company that made TikTok, would own less than 20% of the new business.
Bloomberg says that the new outside investors would hold roughly 50% of the U.S. venture, while ByteDance’s current U.S. investors would keep about 30%.
Oracle is a big aspect of the transaction because they will be in charge of TikTok’s cloud services in the U.S. Oracle already handles the app’s user data as part of a multi-billion-dollar deal called “Project Texas.” This makes sense for the company to be involved in the new project.
A White House official said that even if the details of the arrangement are being worked out, nothing is certain until the deal is officially revealed. If both presidents agree to this deal, it would let TikTok keep doing business in the U.S., which would settle a big disagreement between the two countries.