TikTok's U.S. division is set to be acquired by a consortium of investors that includes Oracle, Andreessen Horowitz, and the private equity firm Silver Lake Management, according to Bloomberg and WSJ.
American investors are expected to hold roughly 80% of the shares in the new company, while the remaining shares will be owned by Chinese stakeholders, according to sources cited by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. ByteDance investors — including Susquehanna International, KKR, and General Atlantic — are also set to be part of the consortium.
Under the terms of the deal, Chinese tech firm ByteDance — the owner of TikTok — will see its stake reduced to below 20% in order to comply with a U.S. national security law passed in 2024. The legislation requires the Beijing-based company to divest its U.S. assets or face a ban.
Current TikTok users in the U.S. will be invited to transition to a new app that the company has already developed and is currently testing, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by The Wall Street Journal. TikTok engineers will rebuild the app’s content recommendation algorithms using technology licensed from TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, the sources said. Oracle will continue to provide cloud services for TikTok in the U.S., Bloomberg reports.
Oracle has been working with TikTok on storing user data in the U.S. and other countries as part of a multibillion-dollar partnership known as Project Texas. According to one source cited by the agency, Oracle is expected to take a small stake in the new entity.
U.S. President Donald Trump has extended the deadline for the TikTok deal for a fourth time, pushing it to December 16.
Source: Forbes
