Here’s What TikTok Under American Ownership Might Look Like

We may see a U.S.-China deal to keep TikTok alive this week, and details on how that long-delayed agreement could come together are steadily trickling out.

The exact terms are yet to be unveiled, but based on initial public statements from the two countries’ representatives, it’s likely to include a U.S. spin-off of the highly popular social media app that would be owned by several American investors and would continue to rely on the Chinese algorithm running the platform.

The biggest cog in China-U.S. talks over the TikTok ban was the much-coveted and highly addictive TikTok algorithm. The algorithm is what has made TikTok so successful, and Chinese officials have been reluctant to give that up to U.S. control, leaving onlookers questioning what value the app would have without it.

On the other end of discussions, the U.S. wanted the app’s algorithm to be completely severed from China-based parent company ByteDance over worries that it gave China a powerful tool of influence over Americans and their data.

But it seems that particular issue may have been resolved.

Wang Jingtao, deputy head of China’s cyber security regulator, told reporters on Monday that the “framework” that the Trump administration bragged about reaching with its counterparts earlier this week will include “licensing TikTok’s algorithm and other intellectual property rights,” and that parent company ByteDance would “entrust the operation of TikTok’s U.S. user data and content security.”

People familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that TikTok was developing a standalone U.S app and that it would only be partially reliant on the Chinese algorithm. The algorithm would instead be exported to the U.S., where it would be trained by American companies using American user data.

Congress passed a law under the Biden administration to ban the app or force its sale to an American company back in 2024 over cybersecurity concerns. The deal was supposed to go into full effect in January, but Trump has repeatedly pushed the deadline, even though he was the President who initially got the ball rolling on a TikTok ban during his first administration. The deadline was extended three times and is now on Sept. 17, which is this coming Wednesday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday that the U.S. and China had reached “a framework for a TikTok deal” amid trade talks in Madrid, Spain. The finalized details of that agreement are expected to be unveiled after Trump meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday.

Bessent told Reuters on Tuesday that the details on the commercial terms with the new American investors still need to be ironed out, but declined to elaborate on what that means.