Chinese tech giant ByteDance has roughly two weeks to save its video app TikTok from a renewed US ban — and there are signs cloud computing giant Oracle (ORCL) could play a prominent role.
ByteDance faces a federal mandate to divest the popular social media app but won a reprieve from President Trump, who, on his first day in office, asked his attorney general not to enforce the law for 75 days. If ByteDance can’t find a buyer for TikTok’s US operations, the ban passed by Congress will kick in April 5.
Vice President JD Vance told reporters this past week that a high-level agreement satisfying US national security concerns by early April was “almost” certain.
President Trump said last weekend that four bidders had emerged, but he didn’t identify them. Names previously floated by Trump and others have included Microsoft (MSFT), AI startup Perplexity, a coalition of billionaire investors, and even the US government.
One prominent corporate name, however, keeps surfacing: Oracle.
The tech giant co-founded by billionaire Larry Ellison already acts as TikTok’s primary cloud provider and had attempted a prior purchase of TikTok that eventually fizzled during Trump’s first term in 2020.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and U.S. President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Jan. 21. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) ·Andrew Harnik via Getty Images
The app started routing its US traffic through Oracle’s cloud in 2022 in an overhaul known as “Project Texas” that aimed to satisfy US regulatory demands to store Americans’ data domestically.
Now Oracle is a leading contender to help rescue TikTok from its current predicament, the Information reported this past week. ByteDance’s leaders reportedly want to retain a hands-on role with TikTok’s operations in any such deal.
Bloomberg separately reported that an Oracle deal being mulled by the White House would task the tech giant with safeguarding Americans’ data on TikTok in exchange for a stake in the company, while leaving app’s algorithm in the hands of ByteDance.
TikTok and its CEO Shou Zi Chew have repeatedly objected to letting go of the app’s proprietary algorithm. Neither TikTok nor Oracle responded to a request for comment.
On Friday, Reuters offered up yet another scenario involving Oracle.
The news agency said the biggest non-Chinese investors in ByteDance may increase their existing stakes and acquire the US operations of TikTok as part of a new entity, while Oracle protects the US user data to ensure it is not available to China.
These investors include Jeff Yass’ Susquehanna International Group and Bill Ford’s General Atlantic. In such a scenario, Chinese ownership in the new business would drop below a critical 20% threshold needed to avoid the US ban.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at President Trump’s inauguration in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
“Every day there is another TikTok rumor,” Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, who is part of a consortium pursuing its own bid for the app’s US operations, told Yahoo Finance this past week.
But “it doesn’t matter what I want or what Larry wants,” O’Leary said, referring to Oracle’s Ellison. “What matters now is the narrative now between Xi and Trump,” referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
“The question is, ‘Does Xi want to sell TikTok, yes or no?'”
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, operates under Chinese Communist Party law, which requires it to share user data upon request.
US intelligence officials have expressed concern that the CCP could use Americans’ data against them and use TikTok’s algorithm to gain backdoor access to swaths of information on US citizens.
To address those concerns, former President Biden signed legislation last April requiring TikTok to divest or face a nationwide ban. The US Supreme Court upheld the law against a constitutional challenge from TikTok and TikTok users.
In effect, the statute outlawed app stores — like those run by Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) — and cloud services from offering the app for downloads unless it is controlled by a country that the US does not consider adversarial.
The law resulted in TikTok’s short-lived shutdown on Jan. 20, Trump’s first day back in office. That same day, Trump delayed enforcement of the divestment via executive order.
A woman poses with her smartphone displaying the @realdonaldtrump TikTok page. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton ·REUTERS / Reuters
The order, which experts have said is legally dubious, opened a 75-day window for the Trump administration “to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way” for TikTok’s US business.
Trump has said he is open to an extension of the 75-day pause if a deal isn’t reached by the deadline. Trump is not empowered to repeal the law; new legislation to overturn the measure would need to be approved by a majority of federal lawmakers.
Vance told reporters this past week that “we’d like to get it done without the extension.”
“I think the question is, what is the equity ownership of the new joint venture? Vance added. “How do you do the contracts for all the investors, the customers, the service providers? … The deal itself will be very clear, but actually creating those thousands and thousands of pages of legal documents, that’s the one thing that I worry could slip.”
Trump has sent encouraging signals about Ellison playing a role in the TikTok situation.
“I’d like Larry to buy it too,” the president said on Jan. 21, with Ellison standing next to him at a press conference held to announce a new $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure commitment.
President Donald Trump signs an executive order on TikTok in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
“Larry, let’s negotiate in front of the media,” Trump said as SoftBank CEO Masa Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also looked on.
“What I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, buy it, and give half to the United States of America. Half, and we’ll give you the permit. And they’ll have a great partner, the United States.”
“Sounds like a good deal to me, Mr. President,” Ellison said.
But Trump has also denied talks with Oracle when asked about the subject in late January after NPR reported that the company could be part of a TikTok deal.
“No, not with Oracle,” he said then, adding that “I never spoke to Larry about TikTok.”
Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.
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