According to CNBC, video sharing service TikTok could soon announce the sale of its operations in North America, Australia and New Zealand next week, with a likely closing price between $ 20 billion and $ 30 billion. Several potential buyers are in the running, including Walmart (NYSE: WMT) en Oracle (NYSE: ORCL).
Just a few days ago, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance launched a lawsuit against the US government following the executive order of President Donald Trump banning US companies from conducting transactions with ByteDance. Trump imposed the ban based on the allegation that TikTok’s extensive data collection on its users could give the Chinese government access to the Americans’ private information, and assist in the creation of slanderous files, tracking federal employees, and “corporate espionage” to perform.”
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Walmart was interested in taking over TikTok, but looked like a poor candidate for success because it was associated with SoftBank Group, which lacked the necessary backbone of cloud technology and therefore probably did not meet the requirements of the US government.
The situation changed abruptly this morning when Walmart, according to Business Insider, announced that it was collaborating Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to make an offer on various TikTok services in various markets. Microsoft can migrate TikTok to its Azure cloud platform and infrastructure and operate the service there. In a press release, Walmart said it was “confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet the expectations of US TikTok users while meeting the concerns of US government regulators.”
The news electrified the giant retailer’s share, which was more than 5% in midday trading, while Microsoft’s share price rose just over 2%.
