According to DCD, ByteDance has signed a legally binding contract to hand control of TikTok’s US operations to a joint venture led by Oracle, avoiding a potential ban. The deal, first unveiled in September, is scheduled to be completed on January 22, 2026. Under the terms, ByteDance will retain a 19.9 percent stake in the new entity, while Oracle and investment firms Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX will each hold 15 percent. The remaining shares will go to existing ByteDance investors like Susquehanna International, KKR, and General Atlantic. This agreement marks the potential end of a multi-year political saga over the Chinese-owned app’s presence in America.
The long road to this deal
Here’s the thing: this feels less like a new chapter and more like the inevitable conclusion to a story we’ve all been reading for half a decade. American lawmakers have been trying to ban or force a sale of TikTok since the Trump administration, citing those ever-present “national security concerns.” Remember when Oracle and Walmart were going to buy it back in 2020? That fizzled out. Then a ban actually passed Congress and was signed by President Biden in January 2025. But President Trump, back in office, kept extending the deadline. It’s been a messy game of political football with TikTok as the ball.
What this actually means
So what changes? On paper, control shifts. A US-based entity, with Oracle firmly at the helm, will call the shots for TikTok’s US operations and data. ByteDance becomes a minority shareholder. In practice, though, I think the core app experience for users probably stays remarkably similar. The algorithm, the content, the vibe—that’s the valuable asset everyone’s fighting over. The deal is structured to let that keep running while theoretically walling off US user data from Beijing’s potential reach. Oracle, which already hosts TikTok’s US cloud traffic, is expected to continue as the cloud provider. It’s a compromise that lets everyone claim a win: politicians get “American control,” ByteDance avoids a total loss, and Oracle gets a trophy asset.
Is this really the end?
Maybe. The January 2026 date gives everyone a long runway, and in politics, a lot can happen in a year and a half. Could regulatory hurdles or shifting geopolitical winds derail it? Possibly. But a legally binding contract is a serious step past the non-binding “preliminary agreements” we’ve seen before. It signals that the exhausting back-and-forth might finally be over. The alternative—an outright ban of an app used by 170 million Americans—was always a messy, unpopular nuclear option. This deal provides a face-saving off-ramp. Basically, after years of drama, the most likely outcome has arrived: not a ban, but a forced partnership with a trusted US tech giant. Now we wait to see if it actually crosses the finish line.
