With TikTok Deadline Looming, Details of a Potential Deal Emerge
Two days before a deadline for Tiktok to be sold to a non -Chinese company or otherwise face a ban in the United States, an agreement has not yet been cemented but the contours of one are starting to take shape.
Vice President JD Vance He said Thursday That the administration would announce a plan for Tiktok by Saturday. A federal law approved last year to solve national security problems relating to Tiktok and its Chinese owner, Bytedance, asked that the app be sold or banned in January. President Trump delayed the application of this law until April 5th.
Trump also met the best officials at the White House on Wednesday to consider a proposal for the future of Tiktok.
While Tiktok has enjoyed the interest of potential buyers Including AmazonThe Trump administration is observing an agreement that would be a sale of the whole company, according to Four people who are familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The plan would be to shoot Tiktok in a new company and involve new American investors to reduce the participation of Chinese investors.
The private equity giant Blackstone and the Andresen Horowitz risk capital company are taking into consideration investments, they said. Two of the people suggested that the private equity company Silver Lake was also taking an investment. The current investors, such as Susquehanna and General Atlantic, would keep a Tiktok and Oracle pole that processes and serves the data of Tiktok users, would probably keep at least an operational role in the management of Tiktok data, three people said.
The negotiations on the ground are not new from Tiktok, who repeatedly torn from the previous control in the United States. The app has cemented its role of cultural Juggernaut in the country, where she has over 170 million users.
Tiktok and Silver Lake did not respond to a commentary request. Andreessen Horowitz refused to comment.
A spokesman for the White House said that any announcement on Tiktok would come from Mr. Trump and refused to comment on the details.
Many aspects of the agreement in question remain dark. It is not clear what will happen to the Tiktok algorithm field. Two people suggested that the new entity could licensed by the bytedance algorithm. According to the law, a new entity Tiktok cannot collaborate with bytedance “as regards the functioning of an algorithm of content recommendation” or for sharing data.
“The congress said that for national security purposes, there must be an operational recovery between China, this new entity and the algorithm,” said Jim Secreto, a former investment security consultant at the Treasury Department, who contributed to modeling the policy of the Biden Administration on Tiktok.
Tiktok, who spent most of the last year looking for and failing to defeat the law in court, claimed that it is not for sale, in part because the Chinese government would have blocked a transaction. Mr. Trump suggested last week that could Relax the imminent rates on China In exchange for the support by the country to an agreement. The last position of the Chinese government on Tiktok is not clear.
The questions about the legal uncertainty of the agreement prompted some of the companies interested in investing in Tiktok to seek compensation for their investments, said one of the people.
The congress, which approved Tiktok’s law in a rare bipartisan vote, may not support the agreement that Mr. Trump is observing.
Senator Josh Hawley, republican of Missouri, said on Wednesday to be skeptical on an agreement that has maintained control of the algorithm of video recommendation of the app inside China.
“If you can get an agreement to actually sell the company and meets the terms that the statute establishes, it’s fantastic; it’s fantastic,” he said. “But otherwise, I think you have to enforce the statute and ban Tiktok. In this way in half, I don’t think it is practicable.”
David McCabe AND Grinder Theodore Relationships contributed by Washington.
