TikTok on Thursday said it has signed a joint venture deal with investors that would allow the company to maintain operations in the US and avoid a ban threat over its Chinese ownership.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew (周受資) told employees that the social media company and its Chinese owner, ByteDance, had agreed to the new entity, with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX on board as major investors, an internal memo said.
Oracle executive chairman and founder Larry Ellison is a longtime ally of US President Donald Trump.
Photo: Reuters
“The US joint venture will be responsible for US data protection, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurance,” Chew said in the memo. “It will also have the exclusive right and authority to provide assurances that content, software and data for American users is secure.”
Chew told staff that half the venture would be held by a consortium of new investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX — which would have 15 percent each.
Affiliates of existing ByteDance investors would own a touch more than 30 percent of the venture, with Bytedance retaining just shy of 20 percent, the maximum ownership allowed for a Chinese company under the law.
TikTok Global’s US entities would manage global product interoperability, and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising and marketing, the memo said.
Chew said there is more work to be done ahead of the Jan. 22 next year closing date for the deal.
The new set-up is in response to a law passed under former US president Joe Biden that forced ByteDance to sell TikTok’s US operations or face a ban in its biggest market.
US policymakers, including Trump in his first presidency, warned that China could use TikTok to mine data from Americans or exert influence through its state-of-the-art algorithm.
Trump has delayed enforcement through successive executive orders, most recently extending the deadline into next month.
Bytedance did not immediately comment on the deal, but experts said it was a compromise that had averted the blow of losing access to the lucrative US market.
“Keeping the US operation live is itself a victory” for Bytedance, technology consultancy Dolphin founder Li Chengdong (李成東) said.
Settling the issue allows Bytedance to focus on new ventures, including artificial intelligence projects, and could help it move toward an initial public offering, Li said.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS