TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance has signed binding agreements with three major investors to sell just over 80% of the short-video platform’s U.S. assets to American and global investors, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees, according to a Reuters report published on Friday.
The signing moves the company closer to avoiding a U.S. ban that has hovered over TikTok since 2020, when then-President Donald Trump first sought to block the app in the United States and force a sale of its U.S. operations.
Chew told staff the agreements were reached with three managing investors, Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, to establish a new U.S. joint venture named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. The deal is expected to close on January 22, Reuters reported.
TikTok’s U.S. future has been shaped by a series of political and legal actions in Washington. ByteDance acquired Musical.ly in 2017 and folded it into TikTok in 2018, after which the app’s global downloads rose rapidly, crossing major milestones in 2019 and 2020.
U.S. pressure escalated in mid-2020 when Trump publicly raised the idea of banning TikTok and later issued an executive order targeting transactions with TikTok and ByteDance. He subsequently ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations, and ByteDance later selected Oracle as a partner over Microsoft in an effort to keep the app operating.
In subsequent years, scrutiny expanded beyond national security to concerns over youth harm and privacy. Multiple U.S. states opened probes in 2022, the federal government moved to ban TikTok on government devices that year, and Chew testified before Congress in March 2023, denying that TikTok shares U.S. user data with the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2024, the U.S. House passed legislation to force a sale or ban, and President Joe Biden signed a law setting a January 19, 2025 deadline for divestment or removal from app stores and hosting services. TikTok and ByteDance sued to block the law, but a federal appeals court upheld it in December 2024.
TikTok briefly stopped working for U.S. users and disappeared from app stores on January 18, 2025, ahead of the law taking effect, before restoring service a day later after Trump — then president-elect — said he would revive access and extend the timeline.
Reuters reported that Trump later extended the sale deadline multiple times through 2025, while U.S. and Chinese officials reached a framework agreement in September to shift TikTok to U.S.-controlled ownership. The latest signing, Chew told employees, is intended to finalize that transition through the new joint venture structure.
