Sept. 20 (UPI) — The U.S. government has tentatively approved a deal for Oracle and Walmart to acquire a 20% stake in a new company, Global ByteDance, averting a ban on downloads of the Chinese-based TikTok in the United States.
Later on Sunday morning, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Commerce Department from ordering Apple and Google to remove from their app stores WeChat, owned by another Chinese company, Tencent Holdings Ltd.
On Saturday night, President Donald Trump told reporters outside the White House before leaving for a campaign rally in North Carolina: “I have given the deal my blessing. If they get it done, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s OK, too.” Trump also said “security will be 100 percent” and the deal will include a $5 billion fund for U.S. education.
The Commerce Department later confirmed that it would delay by one week the restrictions, including WeChat, in the United States by Trump in an executive order.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said last week the president “will do everything in his power to guarantee our national security and protect Americans from the threats of the Chinese Communist Party.”
TikTok is a China-based short-form video application, with more than 100 million users in the United States. TikTok, Oracle, and Walmart issued statements confirming the negotiations and explaining the financial arrangement. Oracle will take a 12.5% stake in the company and Walmart 7.5 percent.
“We are pleased that the proposal by TikTok, Oracle and Walmart will resolve the security concerns of the U.S. administration and settle questions around TikTok’s future in the U.S.,” TikTok said in a statement.
TikTok Global will be a new company created to manage the U.S. operations and most of the users in the rest of the world.
TikTok “will quickly deploy, rapidly scale and operate TikTok systems in the Oracle Cloud” and Walmart “will bring its omnichannel retail capabilities including its Walmart.com assortment, eCommerce marketplace, fulfillment, payment and measurement-as-a-service advertising service,” according to the companies.
The new company will be based in the United States and the five board of directors will include four Americans.
“This technical decision by TikTok was heavily influenced by Zoom’s recent success in moving a large portion of its video conferencing capacity to the Oracle Public Cloud,” Oracle Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison said in a statement. “TikTok picked Oracle’s new Generation 2 Cloud infrastructure because it’s much faster, more reliable, and more secure than the first generation technology currently offered by all the other major cloud providers.”
Walmart said in its statement: “We believe this deal will benefit the U.S. in many ways, including bringing over 25,000 jobs over time as well as continuing to develop exciting, innovative products for people to enjoy around the world.”
