United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order outlining ByteDance’s divestment plan for the short-form video app TikTok. The plan shifts control of its US assets to a group of new investors, including Oracle.
The order was signed on Thursday in the Oval Office and sets a period of 120 days for divestiture to take place.
It is expected to satisfy a law that requires China-based ByteDance to sell its US assets in order to avoid a ban.
The law, passed by Congress, set a deadline of January for the sale, and Trump has postponed that deadline four times – in February, April, June and last week – to ensure the popular short-form video app is not banned.
“There was some resistance on the Chinese side, but the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law,” Vice President JD Vance said during the signing of the executive order at the Oval Office.
While the president didn’t share details of the deal – other than to say the data of US users would be controlled by US investors – he confirmed that Oracle is an investor and also mentioned media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and tech billionaire Michael Dell would be investors without sharing any information on their role or extent of involvement. Vance added that the deal was valued at about $14bn, the first time a value has been put to the deal.
Investors loom
A group of three investors, including Oracle, MGX and private-equity firm Silver Lake, will take a roughly 50 percent stake in TikTok US, a source familiar with the deal told the Reuters news agency.
CNBC reported earlier on Thursday that the three investors in TikTok US would make up a combined 45 percent ownership, citing sources. Bloomberg news agency echoed that information and said that each investor would hold a 15 percent stake in the company.
ByteDance would hold less than 20 percent in TikTok US to comply with requirements set out in the 2024 law.
MGX is an artificial intelligence investment firm and a partner of Silver Lake, and falls under the purview of Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and brother of President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The White House said it would announce the full investor list in the days to come.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison’s involvement could skew content to fit Trump’s preferred point of view, according to experts who spoke to Al Jazeera earlier this week. Ellison is a key Trump ally.
The White House previously told Al Jazeera that the viewpoint is “utterly delusional”.
The president, in response to a reporter’s question about whether the content under the new owners would change to reflect his views, said that every perspective would be treated fairly.
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