A deal has been made between the US and China to keep TikTok running in the US, according to President Donald Trump.
“We have a deal on TikTok, I’ve reached a deal with China, I’m going to speak to President Xi on Friday to confirm everything up,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a state visit to the UK.
The social media platform, which is run by Chinese company ByteDance, was told it had to sell its US operations or risk being shut down.
However, Trump has repeatedly delayed the ban since it was first announced in January. Later on Tuesday, he ordered the deadline extended again, until 16 December.
The US president said a buyer will be announced soon.
The Wall Street Journal reported that under a deal being negotiated between the US and China, TikTok’s U.S. business would be controlled by an investor consortium that would include tech company Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
In a new US entity created under the deal, US investors would hold a roughly 80% stake and Americans would dominate the board, with one member selected by the US government, according to the Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter.
US users, meanwhile, would move to a new app, currently in the testing phase, that will have content-recommendation algorithms using technology licensed from ByteDance. TikTok’s algorithms are a top reason for the app’s success.
Earlier, CNBC reported the deal would include a mix of current and new investors, and would be completed in the next 30 to 45 days.
It also said Oracle would keep its existing agreement to host TikTok servers inside the US. That had been one of the main concerns of American lawmakers, over worries about data being shared with China.
On Monday, a US trade delegation said it had reached a “framework” deal with China amid wider trade negotiations in Madrid.
China confirmed a framework agreement but said no deal would be made at the expense of their firms’ interests.
After the talks, Wang Jingtao, deputy head of China’s cyberspace administration, suggested in a press conference that the agreement included “licensing the algorithm and other intellectual property rights”.
He added: “The Chinese government will, according to law, examine and approve relevant matters involving TikTok, such as the export of technology as well as the license use of intellectual property.”
After initially calling for TikTok to be banned during his first term, Trump has reversed his stance on the popular video-sharing platform.
In January, the US Supreme Court upheld a law, passed in April 2024, banning the app in the US unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sold its US arm.
The US Justice Department has said that because of its access to data on American users, TikTok poses “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale”.
However, ByteDance has resisted a sale, maintaining its US operations are completely separate, and says no information is shared with the Chinese state.
TikTok briefly went dark in January, but this lasted for less than a day before the initial ban was delayed.
The deadline for a sale has since been extended four times, and the latest delay to the ban is due to end on 16 December.
Source: BBC
