Oracle in talks to acquire U.S. operations of TikTok, source says

Oracle, an enterprise software giant, is in talks to acquire the assets of social media company TikTok in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Oracle is working with a group of US venture capital firms that already have a stake in TikTok, said the person, who asked not to be named because the negotiations are private. The Financial Times previously reported on the discussions and named General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital as two of the investors working with Oracle.

Spokesmen for TikTok and Oracle declined to comment.

Oracle’s talks to acquire TikTok’s operations in four countries are underway and have gained momentum in recent days, the person said, and he and Microsoft are way ahead of any other company that has expressed interest. As Microsoft has worked with the US government to acquire TikTok assets for more than a month, Oracle co-founder and executive chairman Larry Ellison has expressed support for President Donald Trump, whose administration has vowed to ban TikTok. in the United States if he was Chinese. the owner ByteDance will not divest its activities in the United States by November. Ellison hosted a fundraising event for Trump earlier this year.

“There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance … could take action that threatens to undermine the national security of the United States,” Trump said in an executive order last week.

Oracle does not have a social media or consumer video business. In theory, Oracle could use the customer data TikTok collects to improve its marketing products, but spending tens of billions of dollars to acquire a mainstream social media company would be a big change for the business. Oracle has struggled to find new avenues for growth as Amazon Web Services dominated cloud computing, followed by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Oracle’s fiscal fourth quarter revenue fell 6% to $ 10.4 billion. Oracle is used to being acquisitive but has slowed down on large transactions in recent years.

– CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

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