FILE PHOTO: The Oracle logo is displayed in an office building in Irvine, California, USA June 28, 2018. REUTERS / Mike Blake
(Reuters) – Oracle Corp. has held preliminary talks with TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, and has seriously considered buying the app’s operations in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the Financial Times reported. Monday.
Oracle has been working with some U.S. investors who already have an interest in ByteDance, including General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, the newspaper reported on.ft.com/3iO2uhM, with instructions for people informed about the matter.
ByteDance and TikTok did not comment on the FT report, while Oracle declined to comment.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Twitter Inc. had approached ByteDance to express interest in acquiring TikTok’s U.S. operations, while Microsoft Corp. was still the favorite to climb a deal.
The Financial Times said on Monday that Microsoft had also seriously considered a bid to take over TikTok’s global operations outside the nations it wrote earlier in August.
Microsoft is particularly interested in buying TikTok in Europe and India, where it was recently banned by the Indian government following border tensions with China, the newspaper said.
But ByteDance is against the idea of selling all assets outside those in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to the report.
U.S. President Donald Trump last week instructed ByteDance to distill U.S. operations of the video app within 90 days, raising pressure on the Chinese company over concerns about the security of the personal data it processes.
General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital were not immediately available for comment.
Report by Kanishka Singh and Ann Maria Shibu in Bengaluru; Edited by Aditya Soni
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