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President Donald Trump is expected to sign a deal Thursday clearing the way for TikTok’s U.S. operations to be transferred from its China-based parent company ByteDance to a group of American investors, two senior White House officials told NBC News.
The agreement, which has been in the works for months, comes amid long-standing national security concerns about TikTok’s ties to China. A senior White House official said the new joint-venture company will oversee TikTok in the United States, with ByteDance holding less than 20% ownership.
“This deal just needs to be signed,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Saturday, calling the agreement “almost over the finish line.”
The deal would bring TikTok into compliance with a bipartisan law passed in 2024 that sought to ban the app unless it was sold to U.S. owners. The platform, which has more than 170 million American users, briefly shut down in January just before Trump’s second inauguration. He later allowed it to resume operations while promising to negotiate a sale.
The Trump administration has extended deadlines to finalize the deal multiple times. Officials confirmed the president plans to grant another 120-day extension to allow the transfer to be completed.
Under the structure, American users’ data will be stored in the United States and managed by Oracle, which will also monitor and retrain the platform’s algorithm to prevent outside manipulation. A new oversight board will be created with six seats reserved for U.S. investors, though the administration has not yet disclosed who will fill those roles.
Trump said Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, and the Murdoch family will play key roles in the new ownership group. “They’re American patriots … they love this country,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday. “I think they’re going to do a really good job.”
The arrangement marks the culmination of years of bipartisan warnings that ByteDance’s ownership posed risks by potentially exposing U.S. data to the Chinese government. Trump first attempted to ban TikTok by executive order in 2020, but the move was blocked and later reversed by President Joe Biden.
Biden eventually signed the bipartisan 2024 bill mandating divestment, setting the stage for the deal Trump is now poised to seal.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the agreement.
