President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday stating his plan to sell US operations of Chinese-owned TikTok to US and international investors will meet the national security needs in a 2024 law.
Notable US company the new company would be worth about $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance said, placing a value on the popular short video app well short of some analyst projections.
Trump Thursday postponed until January 20 implementation of the law prohibiting the app except if its Chinese owners divest it as part of an effort to try to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets from the international platform, align American and other investors, and gain approval from the Chinese government.
The release of the executive order indicates Trump is getting closer to the sale of TikTok’s US assets, but there are many details that need to be ironed out, among them how the US entity will employ TikTok’s most valuable asset, its recommendation algorithm.
“There was some Chinese resistance, but the basic thing that we wanted to do is that we wanted to continue TikTok to be up and running, but we wanted to ensure we protected Americans’ data privacy as the law mandates,” Vance said at an Oval Office press briefing.
Donald Trump’s order states the algorithm will be retrained and watched by the U.S. company’s security partners, and operation of the algorithm will be in the hands of the new joint venture.
Trump stated Chinese President Xi Jinping has signaled approval of the plans. “I talked to President Xi,” Trump stated. “We had a good conversation, I explained to him what we were doing, and he said go ahead with it.”
Trump signs order stating TikTok sale is imminent and worth $14 billion
The Chinese embassy in the US capital of Washington did not have an immediate response to a request for comment. TikTok did not have an immediate response to Trump’s move.
Trump has attributed the success of his reelection last year to TikTok, which now counts 170 million US users. Trump himself has 15 million followers on his own TikTok account. The White House also created an official TikTok account last month.
“This is going to be American-operated all the way,” Trump said.
He revealed that Michael Dell, the chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies and its founder, and Rupert Murdoch, the chairman emeritus of Fox News owner Fox Corp and newspaper publisher News Corp, along with “probably four or five absolutely world-class investors,” would be involved in the deal.
The White House declined to reveal how it arrived at the $14 billion valuation.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, is now worth over $330 billion, as per its latest employee share buyback plan.
TikTok generates a small fraction of the overall revenue of the company.
TikTok was placed at $30 billion to $40 billion without the algorithm as of April 2025, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives.
More: Trump to sign executive order backing TikTok “divestiture deal”
Alan Rozenshtein, a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, said the executive order raises more questions than answers, such as whether ByteDance would remain in charge of the algorithm. “The issue is that the president has approved the deal, but he hasn’t disclosed much about the algorithm,” he said.
ORACLE AND OTHERS TO OWN TIKTOK IN THE US
Three investors, including Oracle (ORCL.N) and private-equity firm Silver Lake, will take a approximately 50% stake in TikTok U.S., two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
Existing shareholders in ByteDance will hold a approximately 30% stake, one of the people said. Existing investors in ByteDance include Susquehanna International Group, General Atlantic and KKR.
With keen investor interest in TikTok, the 50% stake can still change, the source said.
Oracle and Silver Lake declined to comment immediately.
CNBC previously reported, based on sources, that Abu Dhabi-backed MGX, Oracle and Silver Lake are set to be the dominant investors in TikTok US with a total of 45% ownership.
Trump signs order stating TikTok sale is imminent and worth $14 billion
MGX declined to comment immediately on the CNBC report to Reuters.
Republican members of the House of Representatives said they would like to see more specifics of the deal to make sure that it marks a clean break from China. “As the final details are being worked out, we need to make sure this deal keeps American users safe from CCP-aligned entities’ influence and surveillance,” U.S. Representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis and Richard Hudson, who are all Republicans, said.
The deal for TikTok’s US business comes with ByteDance appointing one of seven members of the board for the new company, while the other six seats are held by Americans, a top White House official said on Saturday.
ByteDance would retain less than 20% in TikTok US to meet requirements included in the 2024 legislation that directed it to close down by January 2025 if ByteDance did not sell its U.S. assets.
