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An agreement has reportedly been reached between the United States and China that will allow TikTok to continue operating in the U.S., according to statements from 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,” President Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for a state visit to the UK.
The popular social media platform, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, had been facing a forced sale of its U.S. operations or a potential ban within the country.
President Trump has repeatedly delayed the implementation of the ban since it was initially proposed in January. On Tuesday, he extended the deadline once more, setting a new date of December 16.
The U.S. President indicated that the identity of the buyer will be disclosed shortly.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the deal under negotiation would see TikTok’s U.S. business managed by an investor consortium, including the tech company Oracle, the private equity firm Silver Lake, and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, stated that U.S. investors would hold approximately 80% of the shares in a newly created U.S. entity, with Americans dominating the board and one member selected by the U.S. government.
U.S. users would reportedly migrate to a new application, currently in the testing phase, utilizing content-recommendation algorithms based on technology licensed from ByteDance. TikTok’s algorithms are considered a key component of the app’s widespread success.
Earlier, CNBC reported that the agreement would involve a combination of existing and new investors, with the transaction expected to be finalized within 30 to 45 days.
CNBC also indicated that Oracle would maintain its existing agreement to host TikTok’s servers within the United States. This had been a primary concern for American lawmakers, who expressed worries about data potentially being shared with the Chinese government.
On Monday, a U.S. trade delegation announced that it had reached a “framework” agreement with China during broader trade negotiations held in Madrid.
China confirmed the framework agreement but emphasized that no agreement would compromise the interests of its domestic firms.
Following 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 advocating for a ban on TikTok during his first term, President Trump has shifted his stance on the widely used video-sharing application.
In January, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law, enacted in April 2024, which would ban the app in the U.S. unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divested its U.S. operations.
The U.S. Justice Department has asserted that TikTok’s access to data on American users poses “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale.”
However, ByteDance has resisted a sale, maintaining that its U.S. operations are entirely independent and that no information is shared with the Chinese government.
TikTok briefly went dark in January, but the outage lasted less than a day before the initial ban was postponed.
The deadline for a sale has since been extended four times, with the current deadline for the ban set to expire on December 16.
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