TikTok Announces Agreement With Oracle and Walmart, Gets Trump's Blessing

TikTok has announced an agreement with Oracle and Walmart to avoid a ban in the United States. The deal was announced by Vanessa Pappas, Interim Head of TikTok, in a blog post yesterday.

We're pleased that today we've confirmed a proposal that resolves the Administration's security concerns and settles questions around TikTok's future in the US. Our plan is extensive and consistent with previous CFIUS resolutions, including working with Oracle, who will be our trusted cloud and technology provider responsible for fully securing our users' data. We are committed to protecting our users globally and providing the highest levels of security. Both Oracle and Walmart will take part in a TikTok Global pre-IPO financing round in which they can take up to a 20% cumulative stake in the company. We will also maintain and expand the US as TikTok Global's headquarters while bringing 25,000 jobs across the country.

CNBC reports that the deal has President Trump's blessing.


“I have given the deal my blessing — if they get it done that’s great, if they don’t that’s okay too,” Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn before departing for North Carolina. “I approved the deal in concept.”

Oracle will be responsible for storing and securing TikTok's cloud data becoming a minority investor with a 12.5% stake in the company.

“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,” said Oracle Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison. “In the 2020 Industry CloudPath survey that IDC recently released where it surveyed 935 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) customers on their satisfaction with the top IaaS vendors including Oracle, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM and Google Cloud.... Oracle IaaS received the highest satisfaction score.”

“As a part of this agreement, TikTok will run on the Oracle Cloud and Oracle will become a minority investor in TikTok Global,” said Oracle CEO Safra Catz. “Oracle will quickly deploy, rapidly scale, and operate TikTok systems in the Oracle Cloud. We are a hundred percent confident in our ability to deliver a highly secure environment to TikTok and ensure data privacy to TikTok’s American users, and users throughout the world. This greatly improved security and guaranteed privacy will enable the continued rapid growth of the TikTok user community to benefit all stakeholders.”


Walmart will become a commercial partner and has tentatively agreed to purchase 7.5% of the company. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon would serve as one of the five board members of the newly created company.

We are excited about our potential investment in and commercial agreements with TikTok Global. While there is still work to do on final agreements, we have tentatively agreed to purchase 7.5% of TikTok Global as well as enter into commercial agreements to provide our ecommerce, fulfillment, payments and other omnichannel services to TikTok Global. Our CEO, Doug McMillon, would also serve as one of five board members of the newly created company. In addition, we would work toward an initial public offering of the company in the United States within the next year to bring even more ownership to American citizens. The final transaction will need to be approved by the relevant U.S. government agencies. 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.

Please download the iClarified app or follow iClarified on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and RSS for updates.

You can download TikTok from the App Store for free.

Download