TikTok bows to Trump and becomes American under the leadership of Oracle

The financial architecture of the operation designs a “TikTok US” profoundly different from the current one, designed to dilute Beijing’s influence. Control will pass to a joint venture where 50% of the shares will be in the hands of a consortium led by the technology giant Oracle, supported by the private equity fund Silver Lake and the Emirati investors of MGX. The Asian presence is drastically reduced but not completely eliminated: ByteDance will maintain a minority stake of 19.9%, while the remaining approximately 30% will go to affiliates of the parent company’s current investors. The goal declared by the management is to close the bureaucratic issue by January 22, 2026, a deadline that would mark the end of months of regulatory uncertainty for over 170 million American users.

On an operational level, the transition imposes stringent technical constraints to satisfy the national security requests made by the White House. The new entity will have to retrain the recommendation algorithm based exclusively on data from American users, whose physical custody and surveillance will be entrusted to Oracle’s cloud infrastructures. While content moderation will come under the direct responsibility of the US division, Chew’s memo suggests that the global entity controlled by ByteDance will continue to manage crucial aspects of the business such as advertising, marketing and e-commerce, effectively maintaining a strong commercial relationship with the platform despite the corporate separation.

Despite the optimism that transpires from Trump’s offices, convinced of President Xi Jinping’s approval, the agreement still has to overcome the last and most insidious obstacle: the formal approval of Chinese regulators. The Beijing authorities, when consulted on the issue, have so far kept a low profile, deferring to the competent authorities and reiterating a generic position of principle. Chew’s signature therefore represents a decisive step forward towards the creation of an American social network hub, but the geopolitical game over the control of data and cultural influence between the two superpowers cannot yet be said to be technically concluded.