“Technology samurai” and Trump supporter snatch TikTok from Microsoft



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In early August, Donald Trump gave Bytedance 45 days to sign an agreement to sell the Tiktok video application in the United States and transfer data from American users to American data servers. The deadline is this week.

Guarantor

Microsoft immediately began negotiations for the regular purchase of the video application. In early summer, Microsoft considered making a financial investment and collaborating with the Chinese company internationally.

An agreement was reached on Sunday night, but with a different company. Microsoft did not succeed, confirms the US technology company.

“We are confident that our proposal would have been good for Tiktok users while protecting national security interests,” Microsoft said in a statement.

US database company Oracle will be confirmed as Tiktok’s “trusted technical partner”, according to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Oracle will ensure that US user videos and other information cannot be transferred to China. Bytedance has repeatedly denied that TikTok poses any danger to US national security.

Microsoft said in a statement that it had proposed “significant changes to ensure that the service meets the highest standards of security, privacy, network security, and counteract false information.”

“We look forward to seeing how the service develops in these areas,” Microsoft wrote.

Chinese restrictions

The Chinese authorities imposed restrictions on the negotiations in August. They denied that the underlying technology, which includes significant use of artificial intelligence, can be sold abroad.

TikTok was very early in the use of artificial intelligence, which makes the service more popular and addictive. In less than two years, the number of regular users in the United States has increased tenfold to more than 100 million a month.

Oracle has partnered with the two US investment firms General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, which are already shareholders in the company that owns Tiktok, Bytedance, and are also represented on the board of directors.

Oracle is behind advanced database systems that have been used by the world’s largest companies since the 1980s, including the world’s largest financial institutions and industrial companies. Oracle is not known as a consumer company.

Most likely, the TikTok brand will survive and Oracle operates the Tiktok databases where US user data resides on servers located in the US.

Support Trump

Oracle founder Larry Ellison is one of the richest people in America with a fortune of $ 67 billion and owns more than 35 percent of Oracle.

He has always been fascinated by Asia and sees himself as a “business samurai” and an outsider. His private property in Silicon Valley looks like a samurai stronghold from 17th century Japan.

The luxurious yacht Musashi is named after the legendary samurai of the same name, who was a feared and respected fencer with a sword technique developed by himself.

Ellison was an early investor in Tesla and owns about two percent of the electric car maker. He also owns the island of Lanai, the sixth largest island in Hawaii, and an extensive collection of historical art consisting of one of the largest international collections of samurai swords.

Ellison supported Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

– I don’t think it’s the devil. I support him and wish him well, Ellison said in an interview with Forbes business magazine earlier this year.

Oracle Corporation has a market capitalization of $ 175 billion, the same as a year ago.(Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and / or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases via a link, which leads directly to our pages. Copying or other use of all or part of the content may only be done with written permission or as permitted by law. For more terms, see here.

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