The US operations of TikTok will be majority-owned and controlled by Americans under a deal reached this week to spin off the platform from its Chinese ownership, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Speaking on Fox News, Leavitt said Saturday that Americans would hold six of the seven board seats for TikTok and that the video app’s algorithm would be US-controlled. She added the final deal would be signed in the coming days.
The American board members would have national security and cybersecurity credentials and the remaining board member, chosen by current owner ByteDance Ltd., will be excluded from the security committee, according to a senior White House official.
Talks earlier this week between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Madrid yielded a framework agreement for spinning off ByteDance’s US TikTok operations. Details of that framework had yet to be made public. President Donald Trump has extended the deadline for TikTok’s divestiture until Dec. 16. Congress passed a bipartisan law requiring ByteDance to divest of TikTok by January 2025.
“So all of those details have already been agreed upon, now we just need this deal to be signed and that will be happening, I anticipate, in the coming days,” Leavitt said. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping finalized the deal in a phone call on Friday.
The TikTok arrangement would see ByteDance hold less than 20%, with new investors including Oracle Corp., Andreessen Horowitz and private equity firm Silver Lake Management LLC, according to the official.
Oracle will act as TikTok’s security provider and monitor the app for safety, working with the US government, and Americans’ data will be stored in the US with no access by China, the White House official said.
The official said the deal will allow American users to continue using the popular app safely and securely.
“The data and privacy will be led by one of America’s greatest tech companies, Oracle, and the algorithm will also be controlled by America as well,” Leavitt said.
Trump was once a critic of TikTok but has shifted his views of the app, crediting it with helping him make gains among young voters in last year’s election.
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