US Government’s Plan to Take Over TikTok May Involve Oracle and Microsoft

It’s now been a week since President Trump issued an executive order to pause the TikTok ban in the US for 75 days, and the Trump administration is now hard at work on a deal with TikTok parent company ByteDance. According to an NPR report published over the weekend, the White House is currently negotiating with Oracle and other potential investors that include Microsoft.

Oracle is already powering TikTok’s web infrastructure in the US, so it’s not a surprise that the company is part of the negotiations. As for Microsoft, you may remember that the company expressed its interest in TikTok when Trump wanted the company to sell its non-Chinese business operations to a US-based company.

That deal ultimately fell apart in September 2020 and Oracle won the bid for TikTok’s US operations right after. Fast forward to January 2025, the White House is reportedly working on a more ambitious deal that would see ByteDance cede control of TikTok’s global operations, not just the US.

“Under the deal now being negotiated by the White House, TikTok’s China-based owner ByteDance would retain a minority stake in the company, but the app’s algorithm, data collection and software updates will be overseen by Oracle, which already provides the foundation of TikTok’s web infrastructure. That would effectively mean American investors would own a majority stake in TikTok, but the terms of the deal could change and are still being hammered out.

The report mentioned that Oracle may be interested in a TikTok stake “in the tens of billions,” though other potential investors including Microsoft declined to comment. However, a source involved in the negotiations said that ByteDance believes TikTok could be valued at $200 billion. Again, that would be for TikTok’s global operations, not just the US part of the business.

It’s not clear if Oracle and other US companies would be ready to spend that kind of money for TikTok. The NPR report says that officials from Oracle and the White House are planning to meet again this week, but a lot of things still seem to be in flux. In the meantime, TikTok continues to work in the US, but the app is currently unavailable to download from Apple and Google’s app stores. Both companies don’t want to risk massive fines in case Trump’s recent executive order isn’t enough to effectively pause the law banning TikTok in the US.