Keep scrolling, TikTok has finalized its U.S. joint venture
TikTok, the wildly popular social video platform, is officially here to stay.
After years of questions about TikTok’s future in America, the social media platform and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, have finalized the app’s U.S. joint venture.
The agreement was reached under an executive order signed by President Trump in September.
this required ByteDance and its affiliates to divest the majority of their U.S. operations to an American-led investor group.
In an announcement on Thursday, TikTok said the US joint venture now has three lead investors: Silver Lake, Oracle and Emirati investment firm MGX, each holding 15%, with ByteDance retaining 19.9% of the investments.
The new company will be led by Adam Presser, who previously worked as TikTok’s head of operations, trust and safety. He will join a seven-member board of directors, with a majority from the United States, including TikTok CEO Shou Chew.
ByteDance had been under pressure to divest its stake in the app’s U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban after Congress passed a law that took effect a year ago.
With the new safeguards, there will be more protections for user data and algorithms, as well as better content moderation and software safeguards, the company said.
The new version will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protection, algorithm security, content moderation, and software safeguards for U.S. users,” the company said in its statement Thursday.
These protections will be secured by Oracle’s cloud environment. The tech company’s executive chairman, Larry Ellison, also made headlines for attempting to buy Warner Bros. Discovery via Paramount.
The app will continue to function as normal for US users. According to TikTok, more than 200 million U.S. users and 7.5 million businesses use the platform.
The news, announced last month, comes as a relief to many US-based influencers, many of whom operate in Southern California, who rely on social media platforms to make a living.
The deal lifts the shadow that has loomed over the future of TikTok, which has become one of the world’s most dominant social media platforms and has a large presence in Culver City.
The company’s operations in the United States had been uncertain for many years due to security concerns from lawmakers over ByteDance’s ties to China.
President Trump — who years ago led the campaign to ban TikTok in the United States — allowed TikTok to continue operating in the country and signed the executive order in September outlining the new joint venture.
