President Donald Trump just signed an executive order approving a $14 billion deal that saves TikTok from a nationwide ban. The landmark agreement puts the social media giant's US operations under American control through a partnership with Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi's MGX, marking the end of years of regulatory uncertainty that threatened the app's 170 million American users.
The moment everyone's been waiting for just happened. President Trump put pen to paper on an executive order that officially saves TikTok from being banned in America, and the details are wild. The $14 billion deal hands control of TikTok's US operations to a consortium led by Oracle, private equity giant Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi's MGX - giving them a 45% stake while ByteDance keeps 35%. "I spoke with President Xi [Jinping], we had a good talk," Trump revealed during a White House briefing. "I told him what we were doing, and he said, 'Go ahead with it.'" That casual phone call between superpowers just changed the entire landscape for social media regulation. The structure itself is fascinating. CNBC's David Faber reports that this isn't your typical acquisition - it's more like a joint venture that keeps ByteDance in the picture while satisfying US national security concerns. But here's where it gets interesting: nobody knows yet whether ByteDance's legendary algorithm comes with the deal or gets licensed separately. That algorithm is TikTok's secret sauce, the AI that keeps users scrolling for hours. When reporters pressed Trump about whether TikTok's feed would start pushing MAGA content, his response was pure Trump: "If I could make it 100 percent MAGA, I would. But it's not going to work out that way, unfortunately." He quickly added that "every group, every philosophy, every policy will be treated fairly" - a promise that'll be closely watched. The path here wasn't smooth. Trump has been playing deadline extension games for months, pushing back the divest-or-ban requirements four separate times while negotiations dragged on. Just last Friday, he claimed he'd "made progress" on a China agreement, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declaring the administration was "100% confident that a deal is done". The irony here is thick. Trump was the original TikTok hawk back in 2020, pushing for the app's ban before Biden doubled down with the 2024 divest-or-ban law. But Trump's stance softened dramatically - and he'll admit it was partly because he got popular on the platform. "Is it that important for China to be spying on young people?" he asked in January. "On young kids watching crazy videos?" For , this deal represents a massive win after years of trying to crack the social media market. The company's cloud infrastructure will likely power TikTok's US operations, giving it a foothold in the consumer space it's never had. Silver Lake, meanwhile, adds serious private equity muscle to what's essentially a bet on TikTok's continued dominance among Gen Z users. The timing couldn't be more critical. TikTok's latest ban enforcement deadline was just pushed back from September 16th, and without this deal, the app would've faced the same fate as other Chinese-owned platforms that got squeezed out of the US market. Now, 170 million American users can keep their dance videos and political debates flowing. But questions remain. How will content moderation work with this split ownership structure? Will US authorities get access to user data? And what happens if US-China relations sour again? The deal's still developing, and Trump acknowledged we haven't seen the full executive order text yet. What we do know is that this represents the largest tech deal involving a Chinese company in US history, setting precedents for how future cross-border platform acquisitions might work.
