American companies could soon be running a version of TikTok if a deal to sell U.S. operations of the popular social media platform is reached between the Trump administration and TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

Tech giant Oracle will receive a copy of the algorithm powering TikTok to operate for U.S. users, according to a senior official in President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday.

Determining next steps for the algorithm, currently owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance, has been one of the most closely watched issues during negotiations over TikTok’s future.

The Trump administration official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the emerging deal, said they believe the plan will satisfy national security concerns if TikTok divests from its Chinese parent, ByteDance. President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation before leaving office requiring the Chinese company to sell its assets to an American company or face a ban.

American officials have previously warned the algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.

Oracle would receive a copy of the algorithm and oversee the app’s security operations.

The algorithm would be “fully inspected and retrained,” the senior White House official said Monday. In a call with reporters, the official later emphasized that the content recommendation formula would be retrained only on U.S. data in order to make sure the system is “behaving appropriately.”

It is currently unclear if retraining the U.S. copy of the algorithm on local data would essentially create a separate TikTok experience just for domestic users.

However, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that TikTok will remain TikTok "globally interoperable" so users in the U.S will be able to see videos posted by users in other countries and vice versa.

Full details on investors have not been released. However, the official confirmed that the U.S. operations will be a new joint venture with a board of directors that will have a majority of American members — Oracle and Silver Lake, a private equity firm, are the only confirmed consortium participants so far.

President Trump said prominent billionaires – including media mogul Rupert Murdoch and tech founder Michael Dell – could be part of a deal in which the U.S. will take control of the social video platform TikTok.

Trump namedropped the 94-year-old Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch, the head of Fox News and News Corp, as part of a group of possible participants in a deal during an interview recorded Friday and aired Sunday on Fox News.

The White House official also said that under the preliminary deal — which still requires Chinese officials to sign off on a framework agreement — the United States will not take equity stake in the new venture or have representation on the controlling committee.

Trump, a Republican, has extended the deadline several times as he worked to reach a deal to keep TikTok available. He spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday.