Who Is the CEO of TikTok.

The TikTok CEO is Shou Chew, who leads the company’s global business, but since January 2026 the American app has had a chief executive of its own: Adam Presser, who runs the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture.

People searching “tiktok ceo” usually want one name. For a brand on TikTok, the honest answer is two, and which one matters depends on where your audience lives and what you are trying to do.

Shou Chew: CEO of TikTok

TikTok describes Shou Chew as “the Chief Executive Officer of TikTok, where he leads the company’s global businesses and strategy.” The joint venture’s safeguards are for US users, so in our reading the global business is the relevant one for a UK brand, and TikTok has published its own UK audience figures.

He also sits on the board of the new US joint venture as a director. So the global chief executive has a seat at the table in America, while the joint venture itself is led by Adam Presser.

Adam Presser: CEO of the US joint venture

The joint venture announced on 23 January 2026 that it “will be led by Adam Presser, who was appointed today as CEO by the Board as one of its first actions.”

Presser is not new to TikTok. Variety reported that he was previously head of operations and trust and safety for TikTok, which he joined in April 2022. Before that he held roles at WarnerMedia, including executive vice president of WarnerMedia International, and earlier worked at Warner Bros. Entertainment, most recently as senior vice president of international. Variety says he is based in Los Angeles.

His management team includes a chief security officer, Will Farrell, who oversees the data privacy and cybersecurity programme.

Why TikTok now has two chiefs

The joint venture was set up to comply with an Executive Order signed by President Trump on 25 September 2025. Variety notes the law behind it bars distribution in the US of any app that is more than 20% owned by a “foreign adversary”, in this case China.

The ownership was arranged to fit. TikTok’s announcement says the joint venture has three managing investors, Silver Lake, Oracle and MGX, “each holding 15%”, alongside a wider group of investors. It also says “ByteDance retains 19.9% of the Joint Venture”, just under that 20% line.

The joint venture has a seven-member board with an American majority. TikTok’s announcement says it will run “as an independent entity”.

What the US joint venture controls

TikTok’s announcement gives the joint venture four jobs for American users:

• Data. US user data is protected in Oracle’s secure US cloud.
• The algorithm. The joint venture “will retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data.”
• Software. The US apps go through source code review, with Oracle as its security partner.
• Trust and safety. It will “have decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and content moderation.”

Variety adds that the US content algorithm “will be managed separately from the algorithm used in the rest of the world.” The safeguards also cover CapCut, Lemon8 and other apps in the US.

What stays with TikTok’s global business

Not everything moved. TikTok’s announcement says “TikTok global’s U.S. entities will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.”

Interoperability is the part that keeps the US app connected to the rest of TikTok, so that, according to TikTok, US creators can be discovered and businesses can operate at global scale.

Why the split matters to brands

For a brand working across markets, the practical reading is this.

• In the US, the rules on what content stays up, and the recommendation system deciding who sees it, now sit with the joint venture under Presser.
• Outside the US, nothing in the announcement moves those decisions away from TikTok’s global business, which Chew leads.
• Certain commercial activities in the US, including e-commerce, advertising and marketing, are managed by TikTok global’s US entities, not the joint venture.

Our view is that this matters most for teams running one content plan across the UK, the Gulf and the US. If the US algorithm is retrained on US data and managed separately, a format that travels well in London may not behave the same way in Los Angeles. That is a reason to read performance by market, not as one global number, and to treat the US as its own channel when you plan.

For context on scale, TikTok’s announcement says the US app serves more than 200 million Americans and 7.5 million businesses.

How NBK thinks about it

In our view, a leadership change rarely changes what works on a feed overnight. What it does change is who sets the rules, and over time that shows up in moderation decisions, policy updates and the way the recommendation system behaves.

The organic answer stays the same: strong packaging, steady cadence, content built for the platform, and reporting that is honest about which market each result came from. A social audit that splits TikTok performance by country is the simplest way to see whether the US and the rest of the world are already behaving differently for your account.

Next step

If your team is posting regularly on TikTok but cannot tell which market is driving results, NBK can help find the constraint in the system. For more on who runs the platforms brands depend on, see our profile of the CEO of LinkedIn.