TikTok is reportedly planning to launch a new US-specific version of its app in September as part of the plan to spin-off the short form video platform’s US operations into a separate company majority owned by American investors.
Reports of the new app come as President Donald Trump begins talks with the Chinese government in a bid to get its approval for the proposed deal that would see China-based ByteDance sell TikTok US to a group of “very wealthy people”, with ByteDance itself becoming a minority shareholder.
The long-term future of TikTok in the US has been uncertain ever since Congress passed a law last year that would ban the app if ByteDance failed to sell it, in response to concerns that the Chinese government has access to TikTok user-data via ByteDance.
Artists, creators and labels who rely heavily on TikTok as a marketing and fan engagement tool will be hoping that these latest developments mean that that era of uncertainty is now nearing an end.
Sources have spoken to The Information about the new US-specific TikTok app. They say it will become available in app stores from 5 Sep, two weeks before the current deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok US in order to avoid the ban. The tech sector publication adds that all US users will ultimately have to install the new app, with the current plan to cut off the main TikTok app within the US from March 2026.
When ByteDance was trying to fight the sell-or-be-banned law Congress passed through the US courts last year, it argued that it would be impossible to have a standalone US version of TikTok, because it’s such a global platform that relies on a complex and constantly changing algorithm.
Although critics argued at the time that that argument was simply a bluff from ByteDance bosses who desperately didn’t want to sell TikTok’s US operations.
After all, ByteDance was trying to convince the courts that the sell-or-be-banned law was really just a ban - because a sale was impossible - and that banning a social media platform breached First Amendment free-speech rights in the US Constitution.
The US Supreme Court ultimately rejected those arguments and, with no further legal routes available to block the sell-or-be-banned law, maybe ByteDance just decided to drop its bluff.
Although, just days after the Supreme Court ruling, Trump returned to the White House and had his team - led by Vice-President JD Vance - instigate talks to facilitate a sale of TikTok US, extending the deadline Congress had set for a deal to be done (something he has done two more times since).
Maybe once Team Trump was involved it became clear there was more flexibility on how a TikTok US app might interact with the global TikTok platform - in technical terms - providing the President’s billionaire buddies could make a tidy profit out of any deal.
Of course, technically, whatever deal the Trump administration has agreed with Bytedance still needs to address the actual data security concerns that prompted Congress to pass the sell-or-be-banned law. Though whether the current Congress is in a position to truly scrutinise any of that is debatable.
The bigger hurdle for Trump to pass at the moment is that ByteDance will need approval from the Chinese government for any deal to go ahead. Having recently revealed that a group of “very wealthy people” had more or less agreed deal terms with ByteDance bosses, on Friday the President said that conversations with Chinese officials, and possibly President Xi Jinping himself, will now begin this week.
The TikTok talks have got caught up in the wider trade war between the US and China, of course. Asked by reporters if he was confident the Chinese government would now back the TikTok US deal, Trump said, somewhat bizarrely, “I’m not confident, but I think so”. He then added “President Xi and I have a great relationship” and “I think the deal is good for China and it’s good for us”.
Obviously with Trump, it’s always impossible to separate the insight from the bullshit. But the fact TikTok itself seems to be getting ready to formally split off its US operations suggests that a sale is now likely, and the very real potential of a US ban of the app could be finally off the table by the autumn.