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According to the BBC, the short-video platform TikTok announced that it has made its U.S. operations independent by separating them from its Chinese owner, ByteDance. The new deal follows years of Washington–Beijing tensions and national security concerns.

The threat of a TikTok ban raised during the presidency of Donald Trump was codified in legislation passed in 2024 under the Biden administration, requiring ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations to American investors. The platform would have been banned in the U.S. if the sale had not been completed by January 2025.

The newly formed TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC will safeguard U.S. user data, apps, and the algorithm with data privacy and cybersecurity measures. The board will consist of seven members, the majority of whom are U.S. citizens, and Adam Presser has been appointed CEO.

The three main investors in the U.S. operations—Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX—each hold a 15% stake. ByteDance will retain 19.9%. The remaining 35.1% will be shared among technology and investment firms. Oracle will be responsible for securing user data and overseeing the retraining of the algorithm.

The algorithm that drives the platform’s popularity will now be retrained solely using U.S. user data and secured within Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment. Experts say this could make the TikTok experience in the U.S. different from the global version and alter content recommendations.

The agreement guarantees TikTok’s continued operations in the U.S., where it has around 200 million users, and brings an end to prolonged legal and political disputes with China.