TikTok started 2025 with a brief ban in the US, but come 2026 and the platform is thriving. A potential deal is in the works that could allow it to permanently continue operations in America – but questions linger.
TikTok last month got a new lease of life amid reports that the social media app owned and operated by Chinese company ByteDance had agreed to sell its US business to three major investors – the UAE's MGX, Oracle and Silver Lake.
Proponents of a deal pushed by the Trump White House say that if finalised, it would satisfy national security concerns about China's access to US user data. Those concerns were behind a bipartisan law passed by Congress in 2024 that said TikTok would face a ban unless its Chinese owners divested from the platform.
ByteDance challenged the constitutionality of that law before the Supreme Court, but was unsuccessful, and TikTok was briefly unavailable to US users after a Congress-set deadline was reached.
But US President Donald Trump then extended the deadline and has done so several times throughout the last year, to give the company time to reach a deal with investors.
The reported deal is valued at $14 billion, and news reports said the new joint venture will be 50 per cent held by a consortium of new investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX with 15 per cent each.
Another 30.1 per cent will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors and 19.9 per cent will be retained by ByteDance. The deal is believed to have a closing date of January 22.
Mark MacCarthy, a senior fellow at the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at Georgetown Law in Washington, said that despite initial excitement over what appeared to be done deal several weeks ago, questions remain.
“One is why is the price so low? Only $14 billion, when earlier estimates valued the company at $30 to $50 billion,” he said, adding that “in effect, the joint venture controls only half the company, the half that produces costs but no revenue”.
Mr MacCarthy also pointed out that little is known about which entities will control TikTok's envied but controversial algorithm that decides which content users see, based in part on viewing habits.
Some have suggested that algorithm could be and has been vulnerable to the political whims of China, a charge that ByteDance has vigorously denied.
Regardless, some US policymakers insist the algorithm should be controlled by an organisation outside China.
“My own instinct is that ByteDance is not going to provide 'open source' access to its algorithm, and the US-controlled entity will only be able to fine tune it,” Mr MacCarthy said. He also said that many technology analysts have suggested the real economic value of the TikTok platform is the algorithm itself.
“ByteDance is not turning over its prized algorithm to a US entity for a mere $14 billion.”
Mr MacCarthy said elected officials in the US who continue to allege that China manipulates the algorithm are unlikely to be satisfied with such an arrangement.
He speculated that the ambiguity over algorithm control might be a significant reason why the deal might have been reached.
“It's a win-win,” he said. “ByteDance gets to keep the underlying algorithm and the US joint venture does the content control.”
Oracle, MGX, Silver Lake and ByteDance have not yet responded to The National's requests for comment.
Chinese officials have also been largely silent on the matter. The last public statement came in a social media post by Chinese representative Liu Pengyu in late October.
“China will properly resolve issues related to TikTok with the US side,” he said.
