According to Business Insider, TikTok has finally reached a deal with a consortium of investors to form a new joint venture for its US business. This comes more than a year after Congress passed a law forcing its owner, ByteDance, to divest or face a ban. The Supreme Court ruled against TikTok and upheld that law back in January. Since then, the app has been racing against a series of extended deadlines to find a US buyer. In September, President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving the sale of TikTok’s US operations for around $14 billion. Trump noted at the time that Oracle and its co-founder, Larry Ellison, would be involved in the deal.
The long road to this deal
Man, this saga has been going on forever, hasn’t it? It feels like we’ve been talking about a potential TikTok ban or sale for years. And here’s the thing: the company fought hard. They took it all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing the divestment law violated the First Amendment. But they lost. That January ruling was basically the point of no return. The “divest-or-ban” clock started ticking for real. All those White House deadline extensions? They were just buying time to hammer out the specifics of a deal that was, at this point, inevitable. The political and legal pressure was just too immense.
What this means for everyone else
So, for users, the immediate panic about the app disappearing from app stores probably subsides. The experience might not change dramatically at first—same dances, same trends. But behind the scenes, the ownership and data governance will be fundamentally different. For creators and businesses that have built entire livelihoods on the platform, this provides a huge sigh of relief and some much-needed stability. They can plan again. For the broader tech market, this is a massive precedent. It signals that the US government is willing to take extreme, protracted action against apps it deems national security risks, even hugely popular ones. Other foreign-owned apps are definitely watching this playbook very, very closely.
Oracle’s role and what’s next
The involvement of Oracle and Larry Ellison is fascinating. It’s not a traditional social media play for them. This is less about the “For You Page” algorithm and more about data security and cloud infrastructure. Oracle will likely be the trusted tech backbone, ensuring US user data stays on US soil under a US company’s control. That was always the core concern for lawmakers. Now, the real work begins: untangling the US operations from ByteDance’s global tech stack, migrating systems, and forming this new joint venture without breaking the product. It’s a technical and logistical nightmare. I think the next few months will be about a quiet, complex transition where the goal is for the average user to notice absolutely nothing at all.
