President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday declaring that his plan to sell TikTok's U.S. operations to U.S. and global investors will address the national security requirements in a 2024 law.
The new U.S. company will be valued at around $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance said, putting a price tag on the popular short video app for the first time.
Trump has delayed enforcement of the law that bans the app unless its Chinese owners sell it until Dec. 16 amid efforts to extract TikTok's U.S. assets from the global platform, line up American and other investors and win approval from the Chinese government.
"There was some resistance on the Chinese side, but the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans' data privacy as required by law," Vance told reporters at an Oval Office briefing.
Much is still unknown about the actual deal in the works, but Trump said Chinese leader Xi Jinping has approved it.
"I spoke with President Xi. We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing, and he said go ahead with it," Trump said.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TikTok did not immediately comment on Trump's action.
Trump has credited TikTok, which has 170 million U.S. users, with helping him win reelection last year and has 15 million followers on his personal account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month.
"This is going to be American-operated all the way," Trump said.
He added that the U.S. version of the app would be run by "highly sophisticated" investors including Larry Ellison, the founder of cloud giant Oracle, tech investor Michael Dell and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.
Investment firm Silver Lake Partners and Silicon Valley powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz are also thought to be part of the deal.
Though the details have yet to be finalized, the investment group's total stake in the new venture would be around 80%, while ByteDance is expected to have a 20%, or smaller, stake in the entity. ByteDance will be represented by one person on the board, but that individual will be excluded from any security matters or related committees.
The lineup of investors mentioned are all Trump allies but he insisted that the app would not toe any political line.
He said he would make the American-controlled TikTok "100% MAGA" if he felt he could, but he intends for "every philosophy, every policy" to be "treated right."
The president confirmed that the U.S. version would feature a homegrown model of the app's prized algorithm, often described as TikTok's "secret sauce" that helped it grow into one of the world's most popular platforms in just a few years.
The White House did not discuss how it came up with the $14 billion valuation. TikTok's Chinese parent, ByteDance, values itself at $330 billion.
About 43% of U.S. adults under the age of 30 say they regularly get news from TikTok, higher than any other social media app including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, according to a Pew Research Center report published on Thursday.
Republican House lawmakers said they want to see more details of the deal to ensure it represents a clean break with China.
"As the details are finalized, we must ensure this deal protects American users from the influence and surveillance of CCP-aligned groups," said U.S. representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis and Richard Hudson.
