FT: TikTok’s U.S. Business To Be Spun Off With ByteDance Retaining Nearly 20% Ownership ⇥ ft.com

Hannah Murphy, et al., Financial Times:

Under the terms of the transaction, a group of new outside investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Blackstone and other large private capital firms would own about half of TikTok’s US business, according to several people familiar with the matter. That US unit would be spun off from its Beijing-based parent ByteDance, these people said.

[…]

ByteDance would retain a stake at just below 20 per cent of the business, under the terms of the deal, in order to meet requirements in the US legislation that state that no more than a fifth be in the control of a “foreign adversary”.

A cool thing about this arrangement is how it will make everybody mad. ByteDance is still going to own a fifth of the business and it is possible, according to the Times, the U.S. business will still use its recommendation algorithm. But now the U.S. is also going to have majority ownership over one of TikTok’s most important and influential markets, continuing the dominance of U.S. social media companies. This solves nothing except the problem of a bunch of U.S. venture capitalists owning not enough stuff.

One question: will this cut off the U.S. version of TikTok from the rest of the world, exactly as the China-only Douyin is? Freedom, baby.