By Dawn Chmielewski and Katie Paul
NEW YORK (Reuters) -White House-led talks on the future of TikTok are coalescing around a plan for the biggest non-Chinese investors in parent company ByteDance to up their stakes and acquire the short video app’s U.S. operations, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.
The plan entails spinning off a U.S. entity for TikTok and diluting Chinese ownership in the new business to below the 20 percent threshold required by U.S. law, rescuing the app from a looming U.S. ban, the sources said.
Jeff Yass’ Susquehanna International Group and Bill Ford’s General Atlantic, both of which are represented on ByteDance’s board, are leading discussions with the White House on the plan, the sources said.
Private equity firm KKR was also participating, one of the sources said.
Under the plan, software giant Oracle would continue to house U.S. user data and provide assurances that the data is not accessible from China, this source added.
Representatives for TikTok, ByteDance, Susquehanna, Oracle and the White House could not immediately be reached for comment.
General Atlantic and KKR declined to comment.
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles and Katie Paul in New York; Editing by Kenneth Li and Chizu Nomiyama)
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