Oracle wins bid to buy US TikTok assets, edging out Microsoft, reports say

The Trump administration had given ByteDance until September 15 to sell TikTok’s US operations or be shut down in the country.

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Published: 10:05am, 14 Sep 2020Updated: 4:10pm, 15 Oct 2020

Oracle Corp. has won the race to buy TikTok’s US operations, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the talks, after main rival Microsoft Corp. said its offer for the video app had been rejected.

ByteDance Ltd., TikTok’s parent, turned down Microsoft’s bid to buy TikTok’s US assets and the deal with Oracle is narrower, appearing more like a corporate restructuring than an outright sale, according to the Bloomberg report, citing one of the people familiar.

Microsoft said in a statement on Sunday that ByteDance had informed the company that “they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft.”

TikTok and Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the Post on Monday.

The SCMP reported earlier that ByteDance had decided not to to sell or transfer code behind the popular video-sharing app, citing a source briefed on the company’s boardroom discussions.

At this stage, it is unclear whether the deal will be approved by the White House and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS). According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the participants believe the deal satisfies the concerns around data security that have been previously raised by the US government.