U.S. software company Oracle Corp. said Monday it has been picked by the Chinese owner of TikTok to be its "trusted technology provider," a deal that may salvage the U.S. operations of the video-sharing app otherwise facing a ban in the country over security concerns.
President Donald Trump said last month that the popular social-media service would be banned in the United States on Tuesday unless an American company buys the U.S. operations of TikTok from its parent company ByteDance Ltd.
Speaking on a TV program Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin clarified that the deadline has been extended to next Sunday and added, "We did get a proposal over the weekend that includes Oracle as the trusted technology partner, with Oracle making many representations for national security issues."
He said there is also a commitment to create a new U.S.-headquartered TikTok company with 20,000 jobs, without elaborating.
It is unclear whether Trump will be satisfied with the deal.
Mnuchin said, "I will just say from our standpoint, we'll need to make sure that the code is, one, secure, Americans' data is secure, that the phones are secure, and we'll be looking to have discussions with Oracle over the next few days with our technical teams."
Oracle confirmed in a press release a proposal submitted by ByteDance to the U.S. Treasury Department regarding teaming up as the Chinese company's "technology provider." The California-based company also emphasized that it "has a 40-year track record providing secure, highly performant technology solutions."
Software giant Microsoft Corp. had also been in talks to buy the U.S. operations of TikTok, but it said Sunday that the negotiations did not bear fruit.
TikTok has become the latest victim caught up in the increasing U.S.-China rivalry, with Washington asserting that TikTok as well as Chinese messaging app WeChat could pose a national security risk by capturing vast swaths of data from U.S. citizens for transfer to the Chinese government.
TikTok became hugely popular in the United States after ByteDance acquired U.S. short-video platform Musical.ly in 2017 at a price tag of around $1 billion. Musical.ly was fully rebranded as TikTok.
The app is said to have 800 million users globally. But security concerns have led India to announce a ban of its use in June. In Japan, a group of ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers has recently called for the need to take steps to prevent privacy leaks through Chinese apps.
