TikTok Deal Done (almost)

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TIKTOK DEAL AGREEMENT!

According to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, TikTok and ByteDance have signed binding agreements to move TikTok’s U.S. business into a new entity called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.

The headline structure, as reported so far:

• 50% goes to a new investor consortium led by Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX (which leaves a mysterious additional 5%)

• 30.1% goes to “affiliates” of existing ByteDance investors

• 19.9% stays with ByteDance, keeping it under the 20% line that matters for the law

The deal is expected to close on January 22, 2026. The White House previously extended the enforcement pause to January 23, 2026, which is basically a polite way of saying “get this done now, and yes your holidays are ruined.”

Can you close something like this in about five weeks? It’s not impossible. I sold VidCon to Viacom and got the deal from LOI to signed in 10 days, mostly because Viacom’s deal team was about to roll straight into the CBS merger.

This is… slightly more complex.

Also, once the docs are signed and the shares shuffle, the real work starts. And I have more questions than answers.

15 QUESTIONS

So here are 15 Questions for TikTok USDS, Shou, Larry Ellison’s orbit, Silver Lake, MGX, and whoever else in Washington and Beijing still gets to say “no.”

1. New app, new rules
   A separate U.S. TikTok app has been rumored for months. When does it launch, what changes for normal users on day one, and how fast do the U.S. and global versions drift apart?

2. A Local App in a Global World
   As the U.S. and global apps diverge, how do brands plan and execute global campaigns without losing measurement, targeting, and sanity? Can a London team manage U.S. performance cleanly, and vice versa?

3. One dashboard or complete chaos
   Do creators get one unified metrics and payout interface, or do we split the world into “U.S. TikTok” and “everywhere else TikTok” like it’s 1999 and we’re arguing about region-locked DVDs?  Is this an opportunity for VidIQ, TubeBuddy or ViewStats?

4. Who owns the Algorithm?
   This deal hinges on a “copy and retrain” of the recommendation system. Who controls the U.S. model weights, who audits them, and what does “Oracle oversight” mean day to day?

5. A bottle in front of me, or a frontal lobotomy?
   When the U.S. algorithm fork gets “retrained,” are we talking normal tuning or a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest lobotomy that trashes reach and rewires the feed?

6. Clean room or back door
   Everybody says “security” and “separation.” What is the actual technical and legal wall between ByteDance and the U.S. operation once the inevitable edge cases show up?  And what stops Bytedance from sneaking back in?

7. Moderation with receipts
   Who sets content policy in the U.S. entity? Who runs enforcement? What changes in the appeals process, and how fast does it move when a creator’s business is on fire?

8. Creator monetization reality
   Does creator pay improve, worsen, or stay the same? And how does TikTok USDS win back creators who have quietly quit, moving most of their efforts to Shorts, Reels, and whoever else is paying on time?

9. TikTok Shop, split brain edition
   Shop has been a bright spot in the U.S. If commerce and ads stay tied to ByteDance-led operations while “security and ops” move to the JV, who owns the roadmap and who gets blamed when it breaks?

10. Ellison family crossover episode
    Oracle is central here. David Ellison runs Paramount. Is this just trivia, or does it turn into distribution, advertising, sports, and creator partnerships at scale?

11. Slopocalypse Now
    TikTok is already swimming in AI-generated sludge. With Rabble’s Vine-inspired reboot diVine promising an “AI-free” platform, and an AI backlash brewing, does a U.S.-controlled TikTok clamp down on synthetic spam, labeling, and repost farms, or does it keep the feed slop-happy and call it “creative efficiency”?

12. Save the Children
    With the U.S. getting more aggressive about kids and algorithms, what new guardrails show up in the U.S. app, and what changes actually make a difference, rather than just make good PR?

13. Majority American, Trust Us
    How exactly are you calculating “U.S.-owned” here, especially with Abu Dhabi’s MGX owning 15%.  Who is in that extra 5%, and who, exactly, sits inside the 30.1% bucket of “existing investor affiliates”?  

14. Control and the Escape Hatch 
    What does the board actually look like (seats, votes, veto rights, reserved powers), and how do the U.S.-ownership holders sell or divest without breaking the “majority U.S.” requirement or freezing the cap table forever?

15. Congressional Cojones?
    Does this deal actually satisfy the spirit (and the letter) of the 2024 law, and if not, how fast does Congress come back with a sequel bill with sharper teeth?

And if I asked Ellison, Chew, Trump, and Xi Jinping whether they’re happy with the deal, would they say, “You ask a lot of questions for a beach-bum from Pacifica”?

Have a great holiday!  I’ll see you with predictions, trends and signals in early January, along with some sort of answers – I hope – to at least some of these questions!

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Where’s Jim? Finishing up with off-site production of 1 Billion Followers Summit, catching a bit of holiday cheer and then off to Dubai!

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100% written by me.  AI used very sparingly for edits.

I’ve built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies – including an MCN to Discovery and VidCon to Paramount. Subscribe here on LinkedIn to get this newsletter every Monday.

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