Oracle could become the “technology provider” for TikTok under a deal reached with China’s ByteDance, Oracle said Monday, under a Trump administration order forcing the divestiture of TikTok U.S. assets.
The software company’s official confirmation comes after Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC Monday that the U.S. government received a proposal from Oracle to partner with TikTok. That came after Microsoft said Sunday that ByteDance had rejected its acquisition offer for TikTok.
Financial terms of Oracle’s deal for TikTok were not disclosed. Existing U.S.-based ByteDance investors, including General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, will receive ownership stakes in TikTok under the proposed deal, per a Wall Street Journal report.
“Oracle confirms Secretary Mnuchin’s statement that it is part of the proposal submitted by ByteDance to the Treasury Department over the weekend in which Oracle will serve as the trusted technology provider,” an Oracle rep said in a statement to Variety. “Oracle has a 40-year track record providing secure, highly performant technology solutions.”
Earlier, Mnuchin said that the Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) will review Oracle’s proposal this week.
“We will be reviewing that at the CFIUS committee this week and then will be making a recommendation to the president and reviewing it with [Trump],” Mnuchin said on CNBC. “From our standpoint, we’ll need to make sure that the code is, one, secure, Americans’ data is secure, that the phones are secure and we’ll be looking to have discussions with Oracle over the next few days with our technical teams.”
TikTok had 53.5 million weekly active users in the U.S. for the week of Aug. 30-Sept. 5, 2020, per research firm App Annie.
More to come.