Oracle Reportedly Wins TikTok Bid, After Microsoft Gets Rejection

WASHINGTON—TikTok, a video-sharing mobile application, reportedly accepted a bid from Oracle for its U.S. business, rejecting the other contender Microsoft.

President Donald Trump earlier set a mid-September deadline for TikToks parent company ByteDance to sell the apps American operations.

Microsoft Corp. on Sept. 13 confirmed in a statement that its bid was rejected.

“ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikToks U.S. operations to Microsoft,” the statement said.

“We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikToks 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.”

TikTok received bids from Oracle and also Microsoft in partnership with Walmart.

“I told them that they have till Sept. 15 to make a deal. After that we close it up in this country,” Trump told reporters on Sept. 1.

He said that the U.S. Treasury must be “well-compensated” in any agreement.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Oracle for comment.

The video-sharing app, which is wildly popular among American teens, has been downloaded over 175 million times in the United States and sees over 1 billion users across more than 150 countries.

The platform, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., has come under bipartisan scrutiny over national security and privacy concerns.

In early August, Trump issued executive orders that would ban transactions with TikTok and social media app WeChat within 45 days. The orders also banned transactions with ByteDance and WeChats parent company, Tencent Holdings.

Chinese Intervention

The Chinese regime recently threw a wrench into the sales plan.

On Aug. 28, Beijing introduced new rules on the export of artificial-intelligence technology to foreign companies. The move requires TikToks parent company to get approval from the Chinese government for the deal, according to state news agency Xinhua.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox Business on Aug. 31 that Chinas restriction of tech export is ironic considering much of Chinas AI technology came from Google and Microsoft.

The rule change that restricts the export of artificial intelligence technology includes the algorithm TikTok uses to recommend videos for users to watch based on their preferences and behavior.

Is TikTok a Threat?

The Trump administration has raised concerns that TikTok could be forced to pass user information on to the Chinese regime. Under a 2017 national intelligence law, Chinese firms are required to provide their data to the countrys ruling Communist Party.

“TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as locaRead More – Source