TikTok is getting closer to spinning off its US business, and employees have questions about what that actually means for their jobs.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order blessing the sale of TikTok US to an investor group. Two TikTok employees said they’d seen a link to the executive order posted internally, but as of Friday afternoon, no company-wide memos had followed.
The situation has left some employees wondering who their ultimate boss would be if the deal goes forward and what would happen to their stock options in ByteDance, TikTok’s current parent company. Some ask: Could there be layoffs, as often happens after an M&A deal closes?
“No questions have been answered,” one TikTok employee said. “It makes most people even more nervous.”
TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.
The deal, valued at $14 billion according to Vice President JD Vance, would include a handful of “blue-chip investors.” Trump said on Thursday that Oracle, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Rupert Murdoch would be involved. The prospective arrangement would satisfy the requirements of a divest-or-ban law, the White House said. The Chinese government has yet to formally green-light a sale, saying on Friday that a “basic framework consensus” had been reached.
Two staffers said they were surprised by the $14 billion valuation, which they felt undervalued TikTok’s US business. Analysts tend to agree. Morningstar estimated in June that TikTok US would sell for over $50 billion.
A third employee questioned whether TikTok’s US audience would split off into a separate app.
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Three employees said they were eager to know what ByteDance’s relationship would be to TikTok US after a sale goes through.
ByteDance leaders from China and Singapore have been tightening their grip on various aspects of the company in recent months, as Business Insider previously reported.
“The law asks for no influence, but if ByteDance retains a stake and licenses the algorithm, that sounds like quite some ByteDance involvement,” one of the staffers said.
The executive order says TikTok’s current owner, ByteDance, and its affiliates would own less than 20% of the new company.
TikTok workers have been left in limbo for months as their company has sought a path forward to continue operating in the US. The app briefly went dark in January before returning after Trump, then president-elect, said he would not enforce the law while he worked with the company on a political resolution.
The second staffer said they hoped a sale would bring clarity and “hopefully stability” around satisfying the divestiture requirement. But with little information on the new structure of TikTok US, they were still left wondering what comes next.
