TikTok’s chief executive told employees on Thursday that the company had signed agreements with three major new investors to form an American version of TikTok, bringing it one step closer to finalizing a deal to keep the app operating in the United States, according to an internal memo reviewed by The New York Times.
The agreements with the new investors are part of a complicated effort to reduce the Chinese ownership of TikTok to comply with a federal law. But these investors would only represent 45 percent of the app’s new ownership, and it’s not clear where the rest of the deal stands.
In the memo, the chief executive, Shou Chew, said that TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, had signed binding agreements with the software giant Oracle; Silver Lake, an investment company; and MGX, an Emirati investment firm. The trio and other investors would form a coalition to run a new version of the popular short form video app.
The federal law that TikTok is trying to comply with would have banned it in the United States in January out of concern that Beijing could use it to gain access to Americans’ sensitive data or to spread propaganda. President Trump has repeatedly delayed enforcement of the ban.
The agreements bring TikTok closer to resolving more than six years of questions about the future of one of the country’s most popular social media apps. TikTok has more than 170 million users in the United States, and exerts powerful influence over culture, conversation and politics in the country.
TikTok declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Vice President JD Vance, who has managed the sale process for the White House, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The investor mix described in the memo mirrors a version of the deal described in September by people familiar with the talks. Fifty percent of the new American TikTok entity will be held by new investors, with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX each taking a 15 percent stake, the memo said. It isn’t clear what new investor would take the other 5 percent. Affiliates of certain existing investors in ByteDance will hold 30.1 percent of the new company, and the remaining 19.9 percent will be held by ByteDance.
The new consortium will be responsible for safeguarding American user data, which will be stored in a cloud system run by Oracle. It will also retrain TikTok’s powerful recommendation algorithm on American user data to make sure the content on the app is protected. Content moderation decisions would also be made by the investor group.
Mr. Chew’s memo also suggested the deal would close on Jan. 22, just one day ahead of the latest deadline for TikTok to find a new owner or go dark in the United States.
David McCabe contributed reporting.
Emmett Lindner is a business reporter for The Times.
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