TikTok Sale Set For Thursday After U.S.-China Deal

It’s finally happening. After years of acrimonious court battles and geopolitical gamesmanship, the American version of TikTok is about to change hands, at least on paper. On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin raised a series of conditions for the deal that he called a “structurally better” agreement.

Those familiar with the deal say that the transaction is going to be signed off on by both countries’ leaders and places a value of about $14 billion on TikTok’s American assets, as Deadline reported earlier. [Read more about the changes that led to Grindr’s sale.] Bessent said his job had been getting Beijing’s approval for the transfer — an important one, since China has strict export controls on some algorithms.

What The Deal Includes For TikTok’s U.S. Operations

At the heart of the deal: A new American company led by a majority U.S.-based board will oversee TikTok, and Oracle will be responsible for managing American users’ data, while U.S. recommendation technology will control which videos appear in feeds stateside, according to TechCrunch. That board is expected to feature figures connected to Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Fox Corp., Andreessen Horowitz and Silver Lake Management, providing the operation with tech and media weight.

The operating plan mirrors — and hardens — some of “Project Texas,” Oracle’s previous proposal to host and monitor data from TikTok on American soil. The change now is in ownership and governance: this is not merely a matter of data localization, but structural control designed to solve endemic national security concerns around the ability to access data and influence over the algorithm.

How We Got Here: The Law, Reviews And Negotiations

Washington’s pressure campaign reached its short-term conclusion in a 2024 law that called for divestiture or a ban for TikTok. The administration later issued an executive action certifying that the new framework follows the law’s mandates, paving the way for sale rather than shutdown. That came after CFIUS reviews and courtroom fights, as well as an attempted 2020 deal to give Oracle and Walmart a stake in the company without totally separating operations.

One of the most challenging obstacles has been China’s rules on technology exports, which categorize recommendation algorithms as sensitive. Bessent’s assertion that Beijing signed off on the transfer signals those regulatory knots have been loosened sufficiently to enable U.S.-controlled code for American users, a condition of any meaningful divorce.

Why The Price And Structure Matter For TikTok’s U.S. Deal

A $14 billion price tag for U.S. assets is tiny compared with ByteDance’s global empire. Analysts have priced ByteDance’s broader value at substantially more than $200 billion in private markets over the past few years as revenue expanded rapidly, fueled by the popularity of TikTok and its Chinese sibling app Douyin. The carve-out also demonstrates that regulatory constraints and the physical reality of code, data and product being inextricable from a global platform make clean separation hard.

Governance will be closely watched. A U.S.-based board populated with experienced technology and media operators could provide some comfort to regulators and advertisers that content policies, data practices and moderation decisions are safe from the influence of foreign governments. The trade-off is operational complexity: From model training and feature rollout to everything else, you’ll need domestic sign-offs and clear audit trails.

What This Means For U.S. TikTok Users And Creators

For TikTok’s roughly 170 million users in the United States, the app should remain and feel no different in the short term. Feeds, For You recommendations and creator tools will continue to operate as they always have even as ownership changes hands and Oracle takes on a role in the app. The larger changes will be behind the scenes — data routing, access controls and oversight protocols intended to meet federal requirements.

Stability indicators will be creators’ and advertisers’ eyes. According to Pew Research Center, 67 percent of U.S. teens are on TikTok and 16 percent say they use it almost constantly — signs the platform has captured an unusually dedicated audience. Ad spending by U.S. marketers in short-form video has surged, with companies such as eMarketer projecting further gains attributable to the performance products of TikTok and other platforms. A smooth handoff might limit the disruption to creator monetization and brand campaigns.

The Geopolitical And Regulatory Stakes Of The TikTok Sale

The sale was a blueprint for how democracies might approach digital platforms with foreign links considered sensitive. If the deal catches and delivers verifiable separation — through certification audits, code escrow, real-time monitoring, etc. — it could soothe Capitol Hill hawks and establish a playbook for other apps under inspection. If enforcement slips, there is likely to be renewed pressure to ban them outright.

For China, approving the deal would also avert a U.S. blackout of a globally popular app and maintain its export-law cudgel, although it isn’t clear whether Beijing decided to hold on to that bargaining chip.

For U.S. regulators, it’s a high-stakes test of whether structural remedies per se can mitigate the risk to national security without erasing a platform that has become integral to culture, commerce and political speech.

What To Watch Next As The U.S. TikTok Deal Moves Forward

All eyes will now be on the completion, board appointments and technical migration timeline. Among the key milestones:

• Third-party security audits
• New controls around source code and model governance
• Commitments to advertisers about brand safety

There still might be legal fights on the margins, but the center of gravity has proceeded to a U.S.-controlled TikTok — as of Thursday.