Oracle plans to buy TikTok, according to a source familiar with the negotiations between the enterprise software giant and social media company.
Oracle has its eyes on TikTok, particularly its US, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand assets.
Oracle is collaborating with a group of US venture capital companies that have a stake in TikTok, the source says. According to a report from The Financial Times, General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital as reportedly two of the investors working with Oracle.
Spokespeople for Oracle and TikTok refused to comment on the news.
Oracle’s negotiations with TikTok are ongoing and have sped up in recent days, according to the source. Moreover, Oracle and Microsoft are far ahead of any other firms that have expressed interest.
Microsoft is said to be working with the US government in the firm's acquisition of TikTok’s assets for more than a month.
“This new structure would build on the experience TikTok users currently love, while adding world-class security, privacy, and digital safety protections,” Microsoft said in a statement. “The operating model for the service would be built to ensure transparency to users as well as appropriate security oversight by governments in these countries.”
Trump vs. TikTok
Larry Ellison,Oracle’s co-founder and executive chairman, has expressed his support for President Donald Trump, whose government has repeatedly warned of removing TikTok from the US if Chinese owner ByteDance does not sell its US operations by November. Ellison held a campaign fundraising event for Trump earlier this year.
“There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance ... might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States,” Trump said in an executive order last week.
Prior to the issuance of the executive orders, Trump said he demanded a “substantial portion”of the purchase price during a call he had with Microsoft regarding it’s possible deal for the US unit of TikTok.
TikTok will sue Trump over his administration’s decision to ban the app in the US, according to a person familiar with the lawsuit.
This revelation comes after Trump issued an executive order to ban US transactions with its parent company, ByteDance. The Chinese company previously warned about making a legal move against the US government.
The president’s executive order accuses TikTok of collecting users’ data, which “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”
Meanwhile, the executive order issued for Tencent-owned WeChat, which allows its users to transfer funds to each other, states that financial transactions with Tencent will be banned.
The order prohibits “any transaction that is related to WeChat by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with Tencent Holdings Ltd. (a.k.a. Téngxùn Kònggǔ Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī), Shenzhen, China, or any subsidiary of that entity, as identified by the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) under section 1(c) of this order.”
Oracle's move
Oracle currently has no consumer-facing social media or video business. Analysts believe Oracle could utilize customer data gathered by TikTok to accelerate its marketing products, but investing tens of billions in a consumer social media company is deemed a crucial move for the company.
Oracle has difficulty looking for new spaces of growth as Amazon Web Services has dominated cloud computing, followed by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. In Oracle’s fiscal fourth quarter, revenue dropped from 6% to $10.4 billion.
