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Who owns TikTok in the US now?
TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, just spun out an American venture to operate the popular video app in the United States.
The deal, announced Thursday, is part of an effort to comply with a 2024 federal law that aimed to separate TikTok from ByteDance to address national security concerns over the app's ties to Beijing.
Under the arrangement, non-Chinese investors will own about 80% of the American venture. ByteDance will keep 19.9% of it. The investors, who could potentially have outsize influence on the popular social media platform, will license the app's powerful recommendation algorithm from ByteDance and have the power to moderate content on the app.
So who are the owners of U.S. TikTok?
Oracle
Oracle is a cloud computing and database software company that was founded in the 1970s. It works closely with major companies, including OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, on data centers that can run and deliver its technology to consumers.
What is its stake? Oracle has a 15% stake in the new American entity, tied for the biggest percentage among the new investors.
Who's in charge? Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world, helped found Oracle and is now its executive chair and chief technology officer.
The Ellison family has been in the news a lot. Ellison's son, David, last year bought the Paramount movie studio and the companies under its umbrella.
Both Ellisons have connections to President Donald Trump. Larry Ellison has frequently visited the White House and Mar-a-Lago. David Ellison recently sat with the president at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match and later spent $7.7 billion to buy the league's broadcast rights.
What's notable? Oracle has been enmeshed with TikTok for years. In 2022, Oracle started housing Americans' TikTok data on its servers, an effort by TikTok to convince the U.S. government that it would not expose any information to Beijing.
Under the new TikTok agreement, Oracle will oversee the security of Americans' data and monitor changes and updates to TikTok's powerful recommendation technology. Kenneth Glueck, an executive vice president at Oracle, will have a seat on the new venture's board. The company declined to comment on its investment.
MGX
MGX, an Emirati investment company that started in 2024, focuses on technology and artificial intelligence investments and is a major investor in semiconductor manufacturing and data centers. It has partnerships with Microsoft and BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager. It has also invested in Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, and OpenAI.
What is its stake? MGX, like Oracle, has a 15% stake in the American TikTok app.
Who's in charge? MGX was founded by Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, and G42, an Emirati AI company. The firm's chief strategy and safety officer, David Scott, will have a seat on the new venture's board.
G42 has a number of ties to China. Under the Biden administration, the CIA and other American spy agencies issued warnings about G42's work with large Chinese companies that U.S. officials consider security threats. The company, it said, has offloaded its investments in some large Chinese companies, including ByteDance, as part of an agreement to work with Microsoft and after some members of Congress raised concerns.
What's notable: MGX has been involved in at least two deals involving Trump. Last year, a so-called stablecoin developed by the Trump family's cryptocurrency firm, World Liberty Financial, was used to complete a transaction between MGX and Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world.
MGX also helped finance a $100 billion initiative announced by Trump last January that is focused on building AI data centers. Oracle also participated.
Silver Lake
Silver Lake is an investment company based in Menlo Park, California. It focuses on tech investments and has worked with tech giants including Dell and Waymo, the robotaxi service owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company.
What is its stake? It also has a 15% stake.
Who's in charge? Egon Durban and Greg Mondre are the company's co-CEOs. Durban is on the board of Dell, G42 and Waymo. Durban will have a seat on the new entity's board.
What's notable? Silver Lake previously teamed up with MGX, including on the acquisition last year of a majority stake in Altera, a software and chip company. And it has been an investor in G42 since 2021.
Silver Lake has ties to Oracle, too. One of its partners, Vantage Data Centers, invested $15 billion in a data center campus in Wisconsin as part of a collaboration between Oracle and OpenAI.
ByteDance
The Chinese tech company was founded in 2012, and it invests heavily in AI. It owns several apps and launched TikTok in 2017, spinning it out of China's domestic version of the app, Douyin, which has about 700 million users. ByteDance also owns Toutiao, a news app. The company has been valued at $480 billion in the private markets.
What is its stake? The company will have a 19.9% stake in the American TikTok app.
Who's in charge: The CEO is Liang Rubo, a co-founder who took the top role after another co-founder, Zhang Yiming, stepped down in 2021. Zhang, one of the world's richest men, still works at the company, focusing on strategy.
What's notable: The 19.9% stake is the maximum allowed under the 2024 federal law. ByteDance still owns the global TikTok brand.
Everyone Else
The other investors include the personal investment entity for Michael Dell, the tech billionaire behind Dell Technologies, and a long list of investment firms, including affiliates of General Atlantic and Susquehanna, both of which previously invested in ByteDance.
TikTok also pointed to Alpha Wave Partners, Revolution, Virgo LI, NJJ Capital and Merritt Way, which is affiliated with a San Francisco-based firm called Dragoneer.
Source: EconomicTimes
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