TikTok has reportedly struck a deal with Oracle to sell its U.S. operations to the American software giant, just ahead of the September 15 deadline to sell the business imposed by President Trump.
The deal ensures that the popular social media app will remain operational for its millions of fans in the U.S.
News of the acquisition came not long after the original frontrunner, Microsoft, announced it had failed in its bid to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations following prolonged talks with the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance.
Digital Trends has reached out to Oracle for details on the deal with TikTok and we will update this piece when we hear back.
The scramble for TikTok to find a buyer came after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in early August that said the app would be banned in the U.S. unless ByteDance sold its U.S. assets to an American company by September 15, 2020.
A later executive order extended the deadline to November 12, but last week Trump told reporters that the deadline would not in fact be extended and that ByteDance had until September 15 to reach a deal.
As part of Beijing-based ByteDance, Trump considered TikTok a threat to national security.
In the original executive order, Trump said TikTok “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories.”
It added that if the Chinese government accessed TikTok’s data, it could potentially allow it to “track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
The order also claimed that TikTok “reportedly censors content” that the Chinese government considers to be politically sensitive, and said the app “may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party.”
TikTok said at the time that it was “shocked” at the order, adding that it has “never shared user data with the Chinese government, nor censored content at its request.”
The app is believed to have around 100 million monthly active users in the U.S., and around 800 million users globally.
