【Randy Spears Archives】

Oracle is Randy Spears Archivesjoining the race to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations, the Financial Timesand Bloomberg reported Monday.

It's a bit of an odd fit, given Oracle is primarily a B2B company that sells database software, and TikTok is a cheery video app aimed at the younger generation. However, Oracle certainly has the financial clout to pull it off; the company had more than $37 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the end of fiscal Q4 in 2020.

TikTok's parent company ByteDance hasn't advertised a price for the social app, but Bloomberg says analysts have placed it somewhere between $20 and $50 billion.

According to the reports, Oracle has approached VC firm Sequoia Capital for partnership in a bid to purchase TikTok's operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

TikTok's U.S. operations quickly became for sale after Trump's administration effectively booted the Chinese company out of the U.S. Other reported bidders include Microsoft and Twitter, though it's questionable whether Twitter can pull the deal off financially.

Whoever ends up being the best bidder will have their work cut out for them; separating TikTok's U.S. business with the rest of the company will likely be a complex and expensive process.

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