President Donald Trump will sign an executive order this week approving a deal that transfers majority control of TikTok’s U.S. operations from Chinese owner ByteDance to American investors, according to White House officials.
The agreement reduces ByteDance’s ownership stake to below 20 percent while creating a new entity controlled by U.S. and international investors with no Chinese Communist Party loyalties. Oracle and private equity firm Silver Lake will lead the investor consortium, which is valued at “many billions of dollars,” a senior White House official said Monday.
Under the deal structure, Oracle will license TikTok’s recommendation algorithm and house all data from the app’s 170 million American users on U.S. cloud computing infrastructure. The arrangement aims to address national security concerns while allowing users to keep accessing TikTok through their existing app without downloading a new version.
“It’s going to be real household names,” the White House official said of the investor group, which Trump confirmed will include media mogul Lachlan Murdoch, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell.
Additional investors reportedly being considered include asset manager Blackstone, Walmart, and billionaire Frank McCourt.
The deal represents a dramatic breakthrough for the Trump administration. Trump originally proposed banning TikTok in 2020 over national security concerns but changed his position after joining the platform during his 2024 presidential campaign. Trump credited TikTok with helping him connect with young voters and has repeatedly delayed enforcement of a 2024 congressional law requiring ByteDance to sell or shut down the app.
“I appreciate the TikTok approval,” Trump posted on Truth Social Friday after speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping by phone, describing the conversation as “a very good one.” U.S. and Chinese officials also met in Madrid, Spain, this week to finalize deal terms.
The White House said it is confident China has approved the agreement and does not plan additional talks with Beijing, though both sides must complete paperwork to formalize the deal. The Chinese embassy in Washington said Monday it “would be happy to see productive commercial negotiations in keeping with market rules lead to a solution that complies with China’s laws and regulations and takes into account the interests of both sides.”
ByteDance has said any agreement “will be subject to approval under Chinese law,” though it has not publicly confirmed approving the deal.
Trump’s executive order will include a 120-day enforcement pause allowing investors and ByteDance to close the transaction. The president has already signed four executive orders delaying the original January 19 ban deadline, most recently extending the pause through mid-December.
Congress passed the divestiture law overwhelmingly in 2024 after lawmakers from both parties expressed concerns that TikTok could be used by Beijing to spread propaganda or collect sensitive data on Americans. The Supreme Court upheld the law in January, but Trump postponed enforcement on his first day in office.
The agreement calls for a seven-member board controlled by Americans to oversee TikTok’s U.S. operations. The U.S. government will not take a board seat, receive a golden share, or receive payments as a condition of approval, officials said.
The deal marks a rare breakthrough in U.S.-China relations amid ongoing trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Both sides have sought to defuse conflicts that have unsettled global markets and strained diplomatic relations.
For TikTok users, the ownership change should be largely invisible. The algorithm powering the app’s content recommendations will be retrained under Oracle’s supervision, but users will continue accessing the same app they currently use.