Who is going to own TikTok? No one really knows for sure. The Trump administration has been touting its deal to put the app in the hands of American investors after Congress threatened to ban TikTok unless it was sold from the Chinese company ByteDance to American interests. But the full buyer's group is not final yet—and it's hard to know exactly how it will be chosen.
At the very least, the White House has confirmed that Oracle, which has already been involved in TikTok's data, will run the app's algorithm. President Donald Trump himself has thrown out names including Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell and conservative media magnate Lachlan Murdoch, heir to Fox News. The Wall Street Journal reported a week ago that the consortium to buy TikTok would include Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz; it's unclear whether that is still the case.
In an interview with The Bulwark, former Obama administration official Susan Rice called the deal "a model of corruption." She accused Trump of defying Congress by delaying the sale in order to "negotiate a deal that lines the pockets of his cronies." (Murdoch, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen are all supporters of conservative causes.)
