Mr Trump told reporters he had given his “blessing” to a partnership between TikTok and US firms Oracle and Walmart.

The president had ordered the app to be banned in the US, citing national security concerns. US security officials fear data collected by TikTok’s owner may be handed to the Chinese government.

TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, has denied accusations that it is controlled by or shares data with China’s ruling Communist Party.

#WeAreTikTok and we are here to stay! pic.twitter.com/AaA8OhpvGx

— TikTok US (@tiktok_us) September 19, 2020

On September 19, Mr Trump said the deal would ensure the data of the estimated 100 million Americans who use the app was safe, telling reporters: “The security will be 100%.”

“I have given the deal my blessing,” Mr Trump said as he left the White House ahead of an election rally in North Carolina. “I approve the deal in concept.”

President Trump’support for the deal comes days after his administration said it would bar people in the US from downloading Tik Tok through any app store from Sunday.

Hence the US Department of Commerce decided that it is postponing TikTok ban until September 27. The decision was taken as the US President gave green-signal for the Oracle-Tik Tok deal.

Oracle will be TikTok’s “trusted technology provider,” meaning Oracle will house the entity’s data in its U.S. servers — a boon to a cloud computing business that has lagged behind those of Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft.

It will also get access to monitor TikTok’s source code and algorithms.

Walmart Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon will sit on Tiktok Global’s board and is discussing a commercial partnership with TikTok.

TikTok Global will likely be headquartered in Texas and will hire at least 25,000 people, Trump said, without mentioning a timeline for those hires.

ByteDance would retain a majority stake in TikTok’s assets and control the closely guarded algorithm that determines what clips users see.

The new company will hold an initial public offering in about a year.

Oracle Corp. is the winning bidder for a deal with Tik Tok’s US operations, after main rival Microsoft Corp. announced its offer of the video app was rejected.

However, the deal still needs to get the approval of China, where ByteDance. is based.
Oracle plans to take a 12.5% stake in a round of financing that would precede an IPO

TikTok also said that together, Oracle and Walmart Inc. could end up with as much as 20%.

The new company, called TikTok Global, will seek a U.S. IPO and raise a pre-IPO round of financing.

Existing Bytedance investors that could participate in the pre-IPO round include Sequoia Capital, General Altantic and Coatue Capital.

A host of other companies made proposals or considered bidding. Microsoft Corp. was rebuffed because it wanted to control all of TikTok in the U.S., a condition that didn’t sit well with Beijing.

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US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed the offer and said the Oracle will be handled by government panel that reviews foreign transactions for national security concerns.

The US Treasury said to the media that the government needs to be sure about the security of the app and will be having discussions with Oracle over the next few days with the government’s technical team.

Meanwhile, Oracle confirmed that the company “is part of the proposal by ByteDance to the Treasury Department over the weekend in which Oracle will serve as the trusted technology provider,” the report added.

US President Donald Trump had ordered the sale of TikTok’s US operations by 20 September, after which the app would shut down.

Donald Trump had on 14 August asked TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to divest the US operation of the app within 90 days, citing national security reasons. Trump had claimed that TikTok is a national security threat and has close ties to the Chinese government.

TikTok sued the United States government on August 24, accusing it of depriving the platform of due process when President Trump issued an executive order to block it from operating in the country.

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Citing national security concerns, the Trump administration on August issued an executive order requiring that the short video app at the center of US-China tensions, be sold to a US buyer or face being shut down by Sept 15.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Oracle has secured a deal to manage Tik Tok’s US operations. Both the companies haven’t issued a statement, but the tech giant Microsoft, who was a frontrunner to acquire the app at one time has issued statement, with some pointed remarks.

Through their statement Microsoft, cryptically implied that other bids wouldn’t deal with the issue of protecting user data as seriously as it intended to:

“Byte Dance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft. We are confident our proposal would have been good for Tik Tok’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 combating disinformation and we made these principles clear in our August statement. We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these important areas.”

It is not clear whether TikTok’s partnership with Oracle would allow the short-form video app to avert the ban.

However, Chinese state media refute the rumours that Oracle secured the deal. Chinese government revised its export rules that could block the transfer or sale of Byte Dance’s artificial intelligence technologies. It is highly unlikely that China will allow this move.

The clock is ticking on TikTok’s fate.

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