White House officials released new details of the deal negotiated by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States, enabling over 170 million U.S. users to continue using the social media platform.
The deal will change TikTok’s current ownership from the Chinese ByteDance to a joint operation with the U.S., with the company Oracle providing security measures.
“What this proposal would do is move TikTok U.S. operations into a new joint venture that is going to be based in the United States,” a senior White House official told reporters Monday morning. “It’s going to have a majority of American investors and owners, and a majority American board of directors.”
Oracle, a technology company, is expected to provide top-to-bottom security throughout TikTok, including how the app is updated, how American data are stored, and how the content recommendation algorithm works.
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The new algorithm will be controlled by the U.S. joint venture and will be “inspected and retrained.”
“It’s going to be fully inspected and retrained by the security provider on U.S. user data, and then it’s going to be operated by that U.S. entity,” the official said. “It’s going to be continuously monitored as it operates to ensure that it’s behaving appropriately, that it’s not being used for any kind of malicious purpose, and that it’s not being unduly influenced. So that is how the algorithm is going to be treated.”
The details of the deal come after Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday and after the president claimed that Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch will be involved in the negotiations on Sunday. He also suggested on Fox News’s The Sunday Briefing that Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, Oracle Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison, and Murdoch’s father, Rupert Murdoch, are “probably” going to be involved in the negotiations.
Trump is also expected to meet with Jinping in November on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea.
“As the president said on Friday, following his call with President Xi, we feel confident that China has approved the deal and that all the necessary sort of regulatory hurdles that go along with final approval of the deal will move forward,” the White House official said.
White House officials said they do not expect any more talks with the Chinese delegation on behalf of the U.S. government on TikTok.
The next steps in finalizing the deal include the president issuing an executive order later this week about the deal and Bytedance signing a framework agreement with investors. Last week, Trump signed an executive order extending the TikTok ban from previous executive actions until Dec. 16.
“During the president’s 120-day pause, in order to get to closing, we’re going to see all the necessary implementing documents, the other agreements be drafted and negotiated and finalized, we’re going to see the regulatory reviews be completed,” the official continued. “And then by the end of that 120-day process, I expect we’re going to see a closing, closing document signed by ByteDance and the full investment investor consortium within that enforcement pause.”
Trump is looking for “patriotic” leaders to join the joint venture that will control TikTok.
“There’s been an overwhelming interest in this project from really the top individuals and firms in finance and in technology investing,” the official added.
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The investors will be a mix of U.S. and global firms that have already invested in ByteDance. Oracle and the private equity firm Silver Lake will be among the companies that are investing in the joint venture.
The White House official said the U.S. government will not take equity in the joint venture.