The Trump administration is allegedly working on a plan to save TikTok involving enterprise software giant Oracle and a group of investors, NPR reports.
In the proposed deal, Oracle would acquire the majority of the company while TikTok’s current owner, the China-based ByteDance, would retain a minority share. Oracle would handle things like collecting data on US users and the app’s algorithm—issues that were a point of contention for the judges presiding over the Supreme Court case—as well as software updates.
However, NPR noted that “the terms of the deal could change and are still being hammered out.”
The reports come as the TikTok rollercoaster has continued at full force over the past weeks. The app briefly went dark last week as a result of the application of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary-Controlled Applications Act, but it is now in the process of restoring service in the US (though it’s still absent from Apple and Google app stores at the time of writing).
But the future of the app still hangs in the balance. President Trump signed an executive order just hours after his Monday inauguration telling the Department of Justice to ignore the law banning US app stores and other platforms from hosting TikTok. It directed the attorney general “not to take any action to enforce the Act for 75 days” and instructed the DOJ to “take no action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties against any entity for any noncompliance with the Act.”
Microsoft is allegedly also participating in the recent talks about the takeover, though NPR doesn’t specify what its role in a potential deal would be.
Oracle and TikTok already have close operational links. TikTok migrated its infrastructure to servers owned by Oracle back in June 2022. Oracle was also linked to an earlier deal to buy TikTok in 2020, which never came to fruition and also involved Walmart.
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However, NPR says the retail giant “balked” at TikTok’s potential $200 billion price tag this time around. Neither Oracle, Walmart, nor Microsoft have publicly commented on the deal at the time of writing.
Officials from Oracle and the White House allegedly held a meeting on Friday about a potential deal, and an additional meeting has been scheduled for next week, according to NPR’s unnamed sources.
The ban is becoming a hot-button issue outside of the political sphere; earlier this week a Wisconsin teen was arrested for attempting to set fire to a strip mall, claiming he was motivated by the TikTok ban according to The New York Times.
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About Will McCurdy
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