TikTok Creates Legal Entity to Eventually Maybe Possibly Sell to U.S. Investors (Don’t Call It a Done Deal)

A new entity has been created that will allow ByteDance to sell a majority stake in the U.S. operations of TikTok to a group of investors outside of China, according to new reports from the New York Times and Bloomberg. It moves a deal one step closer to completion, following years of uncertainty over whether the app would be banned in the U.S., though TikTok was quick to note that this isn’t a final deal to sell the company.

The entity will be called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, according to a press release from TikTok, and the major investors include Oracle, the UAE investment firm MGX, and the investment firm Silver Lake, which will own more than 80% of the company, according to the New York Times. Michael Dell is also involved, according to the Times.

The press release announcement notes that the new joint venture “will retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data. The content recommendation algorithm will be secured in Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment.” It’s not entirely clear what that means, but obviously there are concerns that Trump and the U.S. government will tinker with the platform to make it more MAGA friendly.

Congress passed a bipartisan law in 2024, signed by President Joe Biden, that required TikTok to be sold to U.S. interests or be banned in America over national security concerns. The first deadline for the sale/ban was Jan. 19, 2025, but President Trump extended that until April. And then Trump signed an executive order extending it yet again until June. When June rolled around, that was extended again until September. After they blew through that deadline, it was extended again to January 22.

Trump had no authority to just keep extending the deadline, but he did it anyway, which seems to be a theme of this presidency. He had initially tried to ban TikTok during his first term, but that got tied up in the courts and fizzled out. Trump then pulled a 180 while campaigning for the presidency in 2024, insisting that he liked TikTok because it was popular with young people and he had a lot of supporters there who could help him win the election.

It’s entirely possible that this news is in many ways another headfake, given the fact that we’ve heard about a “done deal” many times since President Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second time in January 2025. Back in October 2025, we heard the same thing. A month earlier, there was a big announcement that a “framework” for a deal had been reached.

And when Gizmodo reached out to TikTok on Thursday after the New York Times first broke the news, our email asked about a finalized deal. “I saw your question and want to call out that ‘deal to sell’ isn’t accurate framing. Please see language used in the press release,” a spokesperson for the company wrote.