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The software company Oracle is accelerating talks with the White House on a deal to run TikTok, though significant concerns remain about what role the app’s Chinese founders will play in its ongoing U.S. operation, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
Vice President JD Vance and national security adviser Mike Waltz, the two officials President Donald Trump has tasked with shepherding a deal to bring TikTok under U.S. ownership, are taking the lead in negotiations, while senators have voiced a desire to be read in on any talks, two of the people said. A third person described the White House discussions as in advanced stages.
The people who were granted anonymity were not authorized to discuss sensitive details of ongoing negotiations publicly.
It comes amid ongoing warnings from congressional Republicans and other China hawks that any new ownership deal — if it keeps TikTok’s underlying technology in Chinese hands — could be only a surface-level fix to the security concerns that led to last year’s sweeping bipartisan ban of the app. Key lawmakers, including concerned Republicans, are bringing in Oracle this week to discuss the possible deal and rising national security concerns, according to four people familiar with the meetings.
One of the three people familiar with the discussions with Oracle said the deal would essentially require the U.S. government to depend on Oracle to oversee the data of American users and ensure the Chinese government doesn’t have a backdoor to it — a promise the person warned would be impossible to keep.
“If the Oracle deal moves forward, you still have this [algorithm] controlled by the Chinese. That means all you are doing is saying ‘trust Oracle’ to disseminate the data and guarantee there is no ‘back door’ to the data,” the person told POLITICO.
If, for instance, the algorithm isn’t entirely rebuilt by its U.S. owner or if TikTok’s Beijing-based parent firm ByteDance retains a role in its operations, it could retain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by the Chinese government.
The data security company HaystackID, which serves as independent security inspectors for TikTok U.S., said in February that it has found no indications of internal or external malicious activity — nor has it identified any protected U.S. user data that has been shared with China.
Spokespeople for Oracle, TikTok, ByteDance and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The deal is being billed as a “Project Texas 2.0,” a nod to a previous agreement between TikTok and Oracle to relocate American users’ data to servers in Texas and block ByteDance employees in China from accessing it, according to the first person. But that agreement, which also required Oracle to review TikTok’s source code to determine its safety, failed to assuage congressional and Biden administration concerns that the app is being used by China as a spying and propaganda tool.
The tech-focused outlet The Information reported Thursday that Oracle is a “leading contender” to run TikTok, with ByteDance preferring it for the role. The details about the White House’s approach and the seriousness with which White House officials are considering the proposal have not previously been reported.
It comes as Trump stares down an April 5 deadline to secure a new owner for the Chinese video-sharing company after he signed an executive order in January delaying enforcement of Congress’ ban on the app for 75 days. The app briefly went dark for about 12 hours in January after TikTok’s parent company ByteDance failed to meet the deadline to sell its stake and the Supreme Court upheld Congress’ ban.
Vance, during an interview with NBC News on Friday, said he was hopeful a TikTok deal would be reached by the early April deadline. Last week, Trump said that his administration was in talks with “four different groups” about a deal.
Trump told reporters in January that he was open to Oracle founder and executive chairman Larry Ellison buying TikTok. Ellison is a longtime Trump supporter, and he’s part of the so-called Project Stargate, a $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative that also includes OpenAI, SoftBank and MGX.
While Trump during his first administration sought to ban TikTok over national security concerns, he embraced the app last year on the campaign trail. In December, he told throngs of young conservative supporters at a Turning Point rally in Phoenix that he has “a warm spot in my heart for TikTok” because of the outpouring of support he received from younger voters in the 2024 election. Trump’s campaign-trail reversal came after a meeting with Jeff Yass, a Republican donor who owns a large share of ByteDance. (Trump has denied the issue was discussed.)
It’s unclear whether the deal the White House eventually reaches will satisfy China hawks on the Hill, though they may have little power to complain. Trump’s executive order extending the initial deadline — in the face of concerns from GOP lawmakers and legal experts about the order’s legality — showed his willingness to defy Congress’ will. And the decision on whether ByteDance sells TikTok or licenses its use by a U.S. company ultimately rests with the Chinese government.
Beijing wants to protect TikTok’s monopoly access to its user data and is hostile to any suggestion that Chinese firms bend to the will of suspicious foreign governments. Over the past year, authorities in Beijing and in the Chinese embassy in Washington have mostly dodged questions about the status of possible talks for the purchase of TikTok by a non-Chinese firm.
What little Beijing has said about that possibility hasn’t offered much hope that it’s in favor of such an agreement. The Chinese government “will firmly oppose” any forced sale of the company and require ByteDance “to seek governmental approval in accordance with Chinese regulations” for any potential foreign ownership deal, Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson Shu Jueting told reporters in March. That same month Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin accused Congress of “resorting to hegemonic moves” to try to take control of the app. In January, the Chinese government deployed more conciliatory language about a possible TikTok sale but offered no clues on whether it would approve such a deal.
Any such transactions “should be independently decided by companies in accordance with market principles,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said in January.
Phelim Kine contributed to this report.
