TikTok is finally on the verge of closing its deal with Oracle Corp. and Walmart Inc. with both of them seeking 12.5% and 7.5% of the newly established TikTok Global. This deal has the approval of President Donald Trump.
Bytedance is seeking a valuation of $60 billion for TikTok and if all the parties agree on this valuation Oracle and Walmart will pay a total of $12 billion for their stakes in TikTok.
Earlier Microsoft was leading the race for a complete buyout of TikTok’s US operations, but it was Oracle who structured a deal which meant they would be working with ByteDance more as partners in the global operations.
With the new deal, ByteDance will have majority stakes in TikTok global at around 80%, which also includes operations in the US and other countries.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon will become a director of the five seats on the board of TikTok Global. Oracle with this deal has given assurance that they can provide a more secure environment for TikTok users’ data as they will deploy whole systems on Oracle Cloud.
“Oracle will quickly deploy, rapidly scale, and operate TikTok systems in the Oracle Cloud. We are a 100% confident in our ability to deliver a highly secure environment to TikTok and ensure data privacy to TikTok’s American users.”
Oracle CEO Safra Catz
Oracle will be able to access the full source code of TikTok and will make sure there are no back doors through which ByteDance can spy over American user data.
Over the ongoing negotiations the final valuation may come out a bit different and we may also see a few more minority stakeholders in the firm. But this deal might be a great solution for TikTok to avoid the American ban.
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