On August 1, 2026, Shou Zi Chew returned to Singapore to speak before 575 doctoral graduates at Nanyang Technological University. In his speech, he gave them a fairly personal piece of advice: look for jobs and teams where there is still a great deal left to learn.
Chew knows what it means to adapt to a new environment. He remains TikTok’s global CEO, but since early 2026 he no longer has direct control over the platform’s entire U.S. operation. After years of political and regulatory conflict, the American business was placed under a separate company with its own shareholders and CEO.
TikTok After the U.S. Agreement
The new structure began operating on January 22, 2026, with the creation of TikTok USDS Joint Venture. The agreement allowed TikTok to remain in the United States after years of disputes over ByteDance, data management and the company’s relationship with China.
Non-Chinese investors took a 80.1% stake in the company. Major shareholders include Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, the Abu Dhabi fund. ByteDance retained 19.9%. The U.S. operation was valued at around $14 billion.
The agreement also divided responsibilities. ByteDance retains ownership of the recommendation algorithm and licenses it to the U.S. company, which retrains it using data from American users. Oracle hosts that data and participates in oversight of the code.
The American business is not run by Chew either. Its CEO is Adam Presser, who served as Chew’s chief of staff between 2022 and 2023 before moving into roles related to operations, trust and safety within TikTok. Chew serves on the seven-member board alongside executives including Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban and Oracle’s Kenneth Glueck.
TikTok says it has more than 200 million users and 7.5 million businesses in the United States.
The separation is not complete. TikTok USDS is responsible for data, the algorithm and content moderation, while TikTok’s global business continues to manage advertising, e-commerce and marketing in the United States.
Chew was the person who informed employees that agreements with the new investors had been finalized.
From Singapore to Harvard
At Nanyang, he spoke extensively about his education and about gradually moving beyond the environment in which he had grown up.
He was born in Singapore in 1983 and said that during primary school, almost his entire life revolved around Yio Chu Kang, his neighborhood. When he began studying at Hwa Chong, one of the country’s most demanding schools, he had to cross the island every day and adjust to an environment very different from the one he knew.
His introduction to technology was far less serious. His father bought a 286 computer after a Lotus 1-2-3 salesman promised him everything it could do. Chew told the graduates that he did not use the computer to learn programming or do anything particularly sophisticated. He mainly used it to play video games. That was how his interest in technology began.
After completing compulsory military service, he studied economics at University College London and spent two years at Goldman Sachs in London. He then went to Harvard for an MBA. There he met Vivian Kao, whom he later married. Their first contact had been through email.
He also completed an internship at Facebook. While working in finance, he watched more and more investment flow toward technology startups and eventually decided that he wanted to work in that world.
The Road to TikTok
His next step was DST Global, where he participated in some of the fund’s early investments in ByteDance, when the company was still much smaller.
He later joined Xiaomi, where he became chief financial officer and played a close role in the company’s IPO. He then briefly held the same position at ByteDance.
In 2021, he became CEO of TikTok. Until then, he had been relatively unknown outside technology and finance. That changed when he began having to defend the company before the U.S. Congress.
The U.S. Hearings
In 2023, he testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee at a time when TikTok was facing increasing pressure over user privacy, data security and its relationship with ByteDance.
The following year, he returned to Washington for a Senate hearing on children’s safety on social media.
One of the most widely circulated exchanges was with Senator Tom Cotton, who repeatedly asked about possible ties between Chew and China. Chew responded several times that he was a Singaporean citizen and reminded the senator that he had completed military service there.
The exchange attracted particular attention across Asia.
In January 2025, after the Supreme Court upheld the law that could have blocked TikTok in the United States, Chew publicly thanked Donald Trump for his efforts to keep the application operating.
A year later, the agreement that created the U.S. joint venture allowed TikTok to continue operating in the country under a very different structure.
Changes Inside the Company
While that agreement was being negotiated, Chew was also reorganizing several areas within TikTok.
In August 2025, he merged the core product and safety teams into a new group focused on platform responsibility. Two months later, the operations division — including content, creator monetization and user growth — was moved under product.
In both changes, Zhi Ying, a 32-year-old executive, gained greater responsibility within the company.
Chew was trying to reorganize TikTok while the company simultaneously negotiated its survival in one of its most important markets. He had to keep developing the product and growing the business while a significant part of its structure was being shaped by political decisions made outside the company.
AI and What Comes Next
At Nanyang, he also spoke about artificial intelligence and how rapidly it is changing work inside companies such as TikTok.
Chew said technology is not only about hardware or code, but also about what people ultimately do with it.
He told the graduates that the labor market is difficult to predict. Tools change quickly, and often a new one appears before people have fully adjusted to the previous one.
He did not advise them to try to predict everything that comes next. Instead, he encouraged them to stay close to the people they studied with, keep entering unfamiliar environments and protect their curiosity and creativity.
In the end, he returned to Singapore. He spoke about a small country that managed to achieve an economic and technological presence far greater than its size might suggest.
His own career also traveled a long way from Yio Chu Kang. It took him through London, Harvard, Goldman Sachs, Xiaomi and ByteDance before placing him at the head of TikTok.
The job he holds today looks very different from the one he accepted in 2021. Chew still leads TikTok globally, but he now has to coexist with a separate U.S. operation and a business increasingly shaped by political decisions.
