The Trump administration is expected to announce a deal as soon as Friday that could resolve TikTok’s legal uncertainty in the U.S.
According to a source directly involved in the talks, the White House is considering a plan for a new U.S. entity, led by software giant Oracle, to lease TikTok’s algorithm from its Beijing-based owner, ByteDance. ByteDance is expected to retain a minority stake.
This potential agreement comes ahead of a Saturday sell-by date for the popular video app, which was imposed by Trump. While other bidders, including tech giant Amazon, have shown interest, White House negotiators reportedly aren’t taking their offers seriously.
Oracle, which already provides TikTok with significant backend technical support, would oversee the new U.S. entity. Its role would be to ensure data security and prevent any backdoors that could allow the Chinese government access to the data of millions of American users. The source involved in the negotiations stated that data security, rather than the algorithm itself, has been the primary focus of discussions.
The source noted that the proposed arrangement “looks a whole lot like Project Texas 2.0.” Project Texas was a plan developed during Trump’s first term that would have seen Austin-based Oracle become the custodian of TikTok’s U.S. user data and conduct regular audits of the app’s algorithm.
That plan, which included a “kill switch” allowing U.S. officials to shut down the platform if national security concerns arose, stalled during the Biden administration without final approval. The new Oracle-led plan involving leasing the algorithm, first reported by the Washington Post, reportedly does not include the kill switch option.
