By Echo Wang
(Reuters) – China’s ByteDance has picked a consortium led by Oracle Corp <ORCL.N> for a deal for the U.S. operations of short-video app TikTok, beating out rival bidder Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O>, a person familiar with the matter on Sunday.
ByteDance has been in talks to sell TikTok’s U.S. business since U.S. President Donald Trump threatened last month to ban the service if it was not sold.
The deal will be structured not as a sale but as a restructuring, the source said, without disclosing how much of TikTok’s U.S. operations ByteDance and its investors will continue to own. Oracle will be ByteDance’s technology partner and will handle TikTok’s U.S. user data, the source added.
ByteDance will need approval for the deal from governments of the United States and China. It is not clear whether Trump, who wants a U.S. technology company to own most of TikTok in the United States, will approved the proposed deal.
ByteDance and Oracle did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The White House declined to comment.
Microsoft said earlier on Sunday it was informed by ByteDance that it would not be selling TikTok’s U.S. operations to Microsoft.
(Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Stephen Nellis in San Fransisco; Writing by Joshua Franklin; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Christopher Cushing)
