TikTok rejects Microsoft bid, to team up with Oracle

TikTok’s parent ByteDance has rejected Microsoft’s bid for the video-sharing platform, which will now partner with Oracle.

Echo Wang and Greg Roumeliotis from Reuters reported:

ByteDance has abandoned the sale of TikTok in the United States to pursue a partnership with Oracle Corp ORCL.N that it hopes will spare it a U.S. ban while appeasing China, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The Beijing-based firm had been in talks to divest the business to Oracle or a consortium led by Microsoft Corp MSFT.O after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the sale last month and threatened to shut down the short-video app in the country.

Tom Warren from The Verge wrote:

“ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft,” says Microsoft in a statement. “We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests. To do this, we would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combatting disinformation, and we made these principles clear in our August statement. We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these important areas.”

CNN’s Brian Fung wrote:

The agreement with Oracle comes days before a ban on TikTok in the United States was scheduled to go into effect. After September 20, the Commerce Department is expected to clarify which types of business dealings involving TikTok will be prohibited in the country, according to an executive order Trump signed August 6.

It’s not clear whether TikTok’s partnership with Oracle would allow the short-form video app to avert that ban. The scope and language of the order, along with Trump’s own off-the-cuff remarks about TikTok, have led to confusion about how a ban would be implemented. In another executive order, Trump said TikTok had until November 12 to find a buyer.