The Abu Dhabi royal family is to take a stake in TikTok’s US business after Donald Trump signed an executive order brokering a deal valuing the social media company at $14bn (£10.5bn).
MGX, a fund chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, will take a 15% stake and gain a board seat when TikTok US is spun out.
The US president signed an executive order on Thursday night approving the deal and providing a 120-day window to finalise the details.
Larry Ellison’s Oracle, the private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX will control roughly 45% of TikTok US. Overall, American companies are expected to control just over 65% of the company, with Trump also naming the personal computer pioneer Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox as other investors.
“[TikTok US] will be majority-owned and controlled by United States persons and will no longer be controlled by any foreign adversary,” Trump said. “We have American investors taking it over, running it [who are] highly sophisticated, including Larry Ellison. Great investors, the biggest. They don’t get bigger. This is going to be American-operated all the way.”
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, will retain a 19.9% stake in the US operation.
China has not publicly made clear whether it will approve the deal, although Trump said that he had “had a good talk” with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who “gave us the go-ahead”.
JD Vance, the US vice-president, said the deal valued TikTok US at $14bn. “There was some resistance on the Chinese side,” Vance said. “But the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating but we wanted to make sure that protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law.”
He added: “This deal really does mean that Americans can use TikTok, but actually use it with more confidence than in the past. Because their data is going to be secure and it’s not going to be used as a propaganda weapon against our fellow citizens.”
The $14bn valuation of the US business is far lower than the valuation for ByteDance overall, which is estimated to be about $330bn. By comparison, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is valued at $1.8tn.
The future of TikTok US had been uncertain since last April when Congress passed a law mandating ByteDance sell it because of privacy and national security concerns. Trump repeatedly extended deadlines for a sale to be agreed – or the shutdown of TikTok US – to try to broker a deal.
