Shortly after President Donald Trump “gave his blessing” to TikTok’s U.S. sale, he claimed the deal completely addresses his administration’s national security concerns and “has nothing to do with China.” However, a new statement released by Bytedance, the Chinese startup that owns TikTok, appears to contradict Trump’s claims (via CNBC).
Bytedance says it will retain a substantial 80% stake in TikTok Global, a new subsidiary of the video app for the U.S. market in which both Oracle and Walmart will also be minority holders.
“It’ll be a brand new company. It will have nothing to do with any outside land, any outside country, it will have nothing to do with China,” Trump said, pronouncing the agreement a success on Saturday, September 19.
Plus, Bytedance’s founder and CEO Zhang Yiming will be included in the border of directors of TikTok Global, alongside other members such as the CEO of Walmart.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed in an interview that the new TikTok subsidiary will be “controlled by Americans” and Bytedance will remain a “passive shareholder” with “no access to the company, no decision-making authority” and without the “ability to peer into what they’re doing.”
Bytedance’s latest statement also sheds light on previously fuzzy aspects of the deal. It added that the $5 billion figure Trump quoted that TikTok will have to pay in “new tax dollars to the U.S. Treasury” is merely a “forecast” of corporate taxes and the exact amount will be determined based on TikTok Global’s development.
As rumored earlier, Bytedance won’t be sharing its algorithms and recommendation engine — which power the TikTok feed — with Oracle. Instead, in the statement, it said Oracle will have the authority to conduct security checks on TikTok’s source code in the United States. Examining the source code of any digital service is a common practice for reviewing its security and data privacy protections. Last month, in an 11th-hour twist, China updated its list of technologies that are subject to export restrictions to add “recommendation of personalized information services based on data.”
We’ve reached out to Bytedance and the Trump administration for further comment and we’ll update the story when we hear back.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?