A group of three investors, including Oracle, and private-equity firm Silver Lake, will take a roughly 50% stake in TikTok U.S., capping off months of talks regarding efforts to extract TikTok's U.S. assets from the global platform, line up American investors, and win approval from the Chinese government.
According to Reuters, President Donald Trump said that Michael Dell, the founder, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies; Rupert Murdoch, the chairman emeritus of Fox News owner Fox Corp and newspaper publisher News Corp, and "probably four or five absolutely world-class investors" would be part of the deal.
Oracle is likely to handle the app’s security and safety measures. The company already provides cloud services for TikTok and manages user data in the U.S. Oracle previously made a bid for TikTok back in 2020.
Additionally, as part of the proposed arrangement, Oracle would replicate and secure a new U.S. version of the algorithm, according to a White House official. The U.S.-based TikTok owners could lease the algorithm from ByteDance, which Oracle will then retrain.
Reports from Bloomberg indicate that when the deal is finalized, the TikTok app will be discontinued in the U.S. and users will need to transition to a new platform. However, the specifics of this platform remain largely unclear, including its features and how it will differ from the original app.
However, Chinese media painted a different picture of the TikTok agreement, suggesting ByteDance would continue to play a major or operational role.