TikTok gets a lifeline — and potential new U.S. owners

TikTok got a little more breathing room Tuesday as the Trump administration once again extended the deadline for the social media company’s parent ByteDance to divest U.S. operations. And a report in The Wall Street Journal has detailed which American businesses would run it moving forward.

In an executive order, Donald Trump set Dec. 16 as the new deadline, giving time for the U.S. and Chinese negotiators time to discuss and finalize the framework deal that was announced Monday. Should China approve that deal permanently, TikTok’s U.S. business would be controlled by a consortium that includes Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz, according to the Journal.

The new holding company would be 80% controlled by U.S. investors, with Chinese interests owning the remainder. The U.S. government would have the right to name one board member to the new company, with other American business leaders holding the majority of the other seats.

Should the deal be approved by China, something that is far from certain, American users would be asked to move to a new app. That’s likely going to cause some grumbling from users, who would worry about possible changes to their feed, along with their post history.

Oracle would handle user data, the Journal reports, and TikTok engineers are already testing the new app, which would use technology licensed from ByteDance to recreate the content recommendation algorithms that have made the app so popular with users.

Trump is scheduled to speak on Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping about the framework deal, something Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed was reached only because of Trump’s willingness to let TikTok go dark .

TikTok critics say the app opens U.S. users up to surveillance by China and worry about the mental health impact of the app on children. ByteDance and Trump have downplayed the risk of the app, which is used by 170 million Americans.

Trump technically does not have the power to stop the ban should the framework deal fall through. (There have, in fact, been questions about the legality of his extensions of the TikTok ban, of which there have now been four.) To do that will require an act of Congress. The ban was passed with wide bipartisan support in April of 2024.