FT: Oracle enters race to buy Tiktok

The computing software giant Oracle has entered into the race to acquire Tiktok as American tech companies fight to gain a hugely successful app.

Tiktok is a Chinese-owned video-sharing app that President Trump has said he will ban from the United States due to national security concerns unless a US company acquires it by mid-November.

Oracle, co-founded by the billionaire Larry Ellison, has held preliminary talks with Tiktok’s owner, Bytedance, over buying the app’s operations in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The talks, first revealed by the Financial Times, create a significant rival for Microsoft, which showed it was in the negotiations with Bytedance at the start of August to buy the same services.