The Journal did not have details about the deal, including its price.
Microsoft on Sunday evening said it was out of the running for TikTok and that its bid had been rejected by ByteDance.
Oracle emerged as frontrunner in the race to acquire TikTok last month. The software giant’s bid was being backed by venture capital firms General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, both of whom are major investors in TikTok’s Beijing-based parent ByteDance.
One of Sequoia’s partners, Doug Leone—a major Trump donor—and Bill Ford, CEO of General Atlantic, had reportedly been working with the White House to help secure the deal for Oracle’s consortium.
Oracle’s bid beats out a competing joint offer by Microsoft and retail giant Walmart, which had publicly entered the fray on Thursday, telling CNBC that it would use TikTok to grow its e-commerce and advertising business.
Last month, Trump had endorsed Oracle’s bid calling it “a great company” while expressing support for the company’s billionaire co-founder Larry Ellison, who is also a donor to the President’s reelection campaign.
Key Background
Last month, TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer announced his exit from the company, just months after taking charge. According to a Financial Times report, Mayer had not anticipated the extent to which TikTok would become involved in tensions between China and the U.S. when he took over in June. A TikTok spokesperson had told CNN Business that they respected his decision since the “political dynamics of the last few months” had significantly changed the scope of Mayer’s role.
Last week, TikTok had filed a legal challenge against the president’s executive order banning U.S. transactions with the video-sharing platform and its owner ByteDance. It is unclear how TikTok’s lawsuit against the Trump administration will be impacted by the sale. TikTok is also facing a class-action suit in Illinois filed by the parents of dozens of minors which alleges that the app collects facial recognition data, location data and data on close contacts from minors, and discreetly sends it to servers in China.
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I am a Breaking News Reporter at Forbes, with a focus on covering important tech policy and business news. Graduated from Columbia University with an MA in Business and Economics Journalism in 2019. Worked as a journalist in New Delhi, India from 2014 to 2018. Have a news tip? DMs are open on Twitter @SiladityaRay or drop me an email at siladitya@protonmail.com.
