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.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS