By Phoebe Liu, Thomas Gallagher, Monica Hunter-Hart, John Hyatt and Chase Peterson-Withorn.
TikTok is right here to remain. President Trump signed an govt order on Thursday that paves the best way for the social media app to stay obtainable in the US. The enterprise, which had been dealing with a ban within the U.S. following a bipartisan legislation handed in 2024 to restrict its Chinese language possession, will be taken over by a consortium of largely American buyers.
“It’s run by American buyers and American firms, nice ones, nice buyers. The greatest, you don’t get larger,” Trump mentioned from the Oval Workplace after signing the order Thursday, claiming that there will likely be fewer knowledge and privateness considerations as a result of it’s going to be run by “those that love the nation.”
The full roster of TikTok’s new U.S. homeowners will likely be revealed “within the days to come back,” in accordance with Vice President JD Vance, nevertheless it’s believed to be a who’s who of U.S. billionaires, a lot of whom have shut ties to Trump and to one another. Software program large Oracle, non-public fairness agency Silver Lake and MGX, an AI-focused funding agency established by the federal government of Abu Dhabi, are anticipated to personal round 45% of the brand new TikTok. Trump additionally talked about the involvement of Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch from the Oval Workplace on Thursday. ByteDance—TikTok’s Chinese language dad or mum firm—is predicted to retain 19.9% possession, whereas a broader group of buyers together with current ByteDance shareholders (KKR, Sequoia and Susquehanna), is believed to be taking the remaining 35%. The deal values the U.S. operations of TikTok (minus its profitable algorithm) at round $14 billion, lower than its $22 billion in estimated 2024 revenue.
The greatest face of the deal, moreover Trump himself, is Larry Ellison, the cofounder of Oracle and the world’s second richest person. Trump mentioned Oracle is “enjoying a really massive half” within the deal, together with Oracle taking a rumored 15% share and being the app’s “safety supplier.” It’s a wedding of pursuits between Ellison and Trump. Oracle will get a variety of enterprise from authorities contracts. Plus in accordance with a regulatory submitting, its “revenues and earnings can be adversely impacted” if Oracle can’t hold managing the information and infrastructure of TikTok’s U.S. operations, which represent an estimated 15% of ByteDance’s business. Trump, for whom picture is king, definitely has a lot to achieve from a social media app owned by somebody who’s pleasant with him. The president additionally owns someplace between $32,000 and $130,000 in Oracle shares, per his newest monetary disclosure, which might make Trump—like all Oracle shareholders—technically a small, oblique proprietor of TikTok.
“Should you had an absolute monopoly, what would you consider something that threatened that monopoly? These with essentially the most have essentially the most to lose,” Ellison as soon as advised Forbes in 1996, talking of then-dominant Microsoft. Now Ellison and his personal software program agency look like shopping for up as many bits of the know-how and media markets as he can, from Paramount (and maybe Warner Bros.) to stakes in X and probably TikTok.
One other rumored main investor within the deal is Abu Dhabi-based MGX, an AI-focused funding agency backed by the United Arab Emirates’ sovereign wealth fund. Just like the others, MGX has a connection to Trump. The agency introduced a $2 billion funding in crypto change Binance in March, funded utilizing $2 billion of USD1, the stablecoin created by Trump’s World Liberty Financial. The determination to make use of USD1 helped give the president’s coin legitimacy and scale, swelling its market cap and allowing the president to generate interest on the MGX deposits. MGX additionally partnered with Silver Lake in a majority buyout of Intel’s Altera unit earlier this month.
It stays unclear what precisely will occur to the one-third or so of the brand new U.S. TikTok that will likely be owned each by current ByteDance buyers and new shareholders, to what extent that shareholding may mirror ByteDance’s current possession construction or whether or not any money will change arms in that a part of the deal. What we do know is that the opposite billionaires concerned within the transaction—Ellison’s right-hand lady, Oracle govt vice chair Safra Catz; non-public fairness agency Silver Lake’s managing companions Egon Durban, Greg Mondre and Kenneth Hao; and Abu Dhabi-based MGX—have deeply entrenched relationships with Ellison, Trump and one another. In some methods, the deal is many years within the making.
Right here’s a have a look at the online of billionaires who’re anticipated to manage the brand new U.S. TikTok.
Larry Ellison (estimated web price: $352 billion)
The TikTok deal is meant to make it more durable for the Chinese language authorities to spy on U.S.-based customers. However what in regards to the U.S. authorities? Ellison’s relationship with the federal government stretches again practically 50 years. The CIA was Oracle’s first buyer in 1977, and Ellison advocated for “a nationwide safety database mixed with biometrics, thumb prints, hand prints, iris scans or no matter is greatest can be utilized to detect folks with false identities” in a 2002 op-ed. Ellison hasn’t straight donated a lot to Trump’s campaigns—he hosted a fundraiser for Trump in 2020 however bankrolled Tim Scott in 2024—however his relationship with the president is longstanding and amicable.
In January, Ellison confirmed up on the White Home to assist Trump announce his $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure initiative, which seems to incorporate a $300 billion cloud deal between Oracle and OpenAI, in accordance with The Wall Avenue Journal. That month, Trump additionally advised reporters that he would help an Ellison-led deal to purchase TikTok. Oracle’s earlier bid to purchase the app, which might have given it a 12.5% stake, failed in 2020. It’s doable that Ellison can be open to creating TikTok Trump-friendlier, on condition that he’s promised an overhaul of Paramount-owned CBS—probably seeded by Skydance’s vow to finish variety, fairness and inclusion packages.
Michael Dell ($138.7 billion)
Dell has by no means donated on to Trump, however his firm Dell Applied sciences offers {hardware} and software program for Oracle to run its cloud purposes—a partnership (and friendship) with Ellison that started over 20 years in the past after their two firms first partnered. Dell, who began his firm out of his storage in Texas again in 1984, can also be tight with Egon Durban and Silver Lake. The buyout agency helped finance his 2013 leveraged buyout of his then publicly-traded firm in a deal that reaped billions for Dell, Durban and Silver Lake.
Jeff Yass ($65.7 billion), Arthur Dantchik ($16.3 billion), Joel Greenberg ($2.9 billion)
Yass, the biggest particular person shareholder in market making large Susquehanna (an current ByteDance investor), is a libertarian and GOP megadonor who personally gave $99 million to conservative teams within the 2024 election cycle. A “By no means Trumper” in 2016 who mentioned he hoped Trump would exit politics as lately as 2022, the billionaire hopped on the Trump prepare across the time Congress began mooting a invoice that might have compelled ByteDance to divest the video sharing app, a scenario that might have been lower than supreme for its American backers, together with Yass and his Susquehanna cofounders Dantchik and Greenberg. Then-candidate Trump, after a gathering with Yass, spoke out in opposition to the invoice final March.
Rupert Murdoch ($23.8 billion)
Information Corp, the dad or mum firm of Fox Information, is said to be joining TikTok’s possession group, in a transfer that can increase questions on whether or not the MAGA-friendly tv community will achieve most well-liked distribution standing on TikTok’s feed. New Corp.’s controlling shareholder, Murdoch was touted in Trump’s Oval Workplace signing as being an investor within the deal. In the meantime, Trump is suing Murdoch and New Corp’s The Wall Avenue Journal after the newspaper reported on a letter apparently written by Trump to Jeffrey Epstein.
Henry Kravis ($16 billion), George Roberts ($17.4 billion)
KKR, the publicly traded non-public fairness large they cofounded, initially invested in ByteDance via its Higher China Personal Fairness workforce in a 2018 fundraise that valued the social media large at $75 billion. KKR now reportedly owns round 2% of ByteDance however doesn’t maintain any seats on its board. It’s unclear how KKR’s stake will likely be impacted by the brand new U.S. deal. Kravis, a Trump supporter, was at one level floated as a possible decide for Secretary of the Treasury.
Neil Shen ($3.8 billion)
Shen, who serves on ByteDance’s board of administrators, is the founding and managing associate of HongShan, the Chinese language funding agency that spun out of Sequoia Capital in 2023. Sequoia first grew to become concerned with TikTok dad or mum firm ByteDance in 2014, when HongShan (then Sequoia China, led by Shen) invested in its Sequence C funding spherical. HongShan took an preliminary 10% stake within the firm at a $465 million valuation and has since invested in a number of subsequent funding rounds. The agency reportedly nonetheless owns simply over 10% of ByteDance; it’s unclear how its stake might be impacted by the brand new U.S. deal.
Safra Catz ($3.3 billion)
Oracle’s CEO from 2014 till Monday (when she shifted to govt vice chair), Catz has supported Trump via most of her tenure on the software program large. She served on Trump’s 2016 transition workforce and donated $1 million to a pro-Trump PAC in 2024. Catz was among the many tech executives who attended Trump’s White Home dinner in September, the place she mentioned what Trump is doing is “making it doable for America to win.”
Egon Durban, Greg Mondre, Kenneth Hao ($2.3 billion every)
Tech-focused non-public fairness agency Silver Lake’s billionaire managing companions— Durban, Mondre and Hao—have donated to each Democratic and Republican causes, per FEC filings, however by no means to Trump or his PACs (Mondre gave to Joe Biden in the course of the 2020 election). But they’ve connections to the president via their portfolio. In 2016, Silver Lake purchased into UFC, the combined martial arts group headed by Trump pal Dana White, who helped the president coordinate his numerous “manosphere” podcast appearances in the course of the 2024 election. Durban at present serves on the boards of UFC dad and mom TKO Holdings and Endeavor Holdings, the latter of which he chairs.
Silver Lake additionally has preexisting relationships with a number of of the opposite TikTok buyers. The agency is a serious investor in Dell Applied sciences, owned by Michael Dell (see beneath), and helped finance its $24.9 billion buyout to go non-public in 2013. Durban sits on Dell’s board. Silver Lake and KKR (beneath) have partnered on many offers. And the agency has historic ties to Oracle; Silver Lake cofounder David Roux (who’s not with the corporate) was an Oracle VP within the Nineteen Nineties and lately said he had a “actually good relationship” with Ellison.
One other thread within the net: The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala owns a minority stake in Silver Lake, and lately, Mubadala has made investments in partnership with each Dell and the non-public fairness agency of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
This received’t be Silver Lake’s first foray into social media. The agency invested $1 billion in Twitter in 2020; Durban then joined the board and permitted Elon Musk’s buy of the platform two years later, when Ellison additionally put in $1 billion.
Marc Andreessen ($2 billion)
The Silicon Valley legend received wealthy as an early backer of Instagram, Oculus VR and Fb. He was certainly one of Trump’s largest VC backers within the 2024 election. In December 2024, Andreessen mentioned he was spending “half” his time at Mar-a-Lago advising Trump on tech and financial coverage for his second time period. Then he was employed as a self-described “unpaid intern” on the Division of Authorities Effectivity, the place he helped interview and recruit candidates for the Musk-led cost-cutting initiative. He donated $4.5 million to Proper For America, a pro-Trump tremendous PAC, in late 2024 and gave $3 million to tremendous PAC MAGA Inc., in early 2025. It’s unclear if Andreessen can be investing in TikTok personally or via his agency, Andreessen Horowitz.
