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As questions continue to swirl around Washington about the future of TikTok, the name of one potential suitor for the popular video app keeps coming up: Oracle.
On Tuesday, Oracle met with top aides on Capitol Hill to talk about how the U.S. tech giant, which processes and serves TikTok user data, plans to work with the Chinese-owned video app in the United States in the coming weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
The questions came as TikTok stares down an April 5 deadline from a federal law that prohibits its distribution in the country if it is not sold to a non-Chinese owner. TikTok’s owner is the Chinese internet company ByteDance, and its Chinese ties have raised questions about whether the app poses a national security threat in the United States.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the aides also raised the topic of whether Oracle would be involved in running TikTok, after a recent Politico report that the company was in talks with the White House over a deal, one of the people said. The aides sought assurances from Oracle that any deal would comply with the law.
The meeting, which was requested by aides, included staff members from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Speaker Mike Johnson’s office, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, two people with knowledge of the meeting said.
TikTok is facing yet another political scramble over its future. In January, President Trump delayed enforcement of the law that would ban TikTok from the United States, which passed Congress with bipartisan support and was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court. Mr. Trump has promised to make a deal for the app to protect national security, and tapped Vice President JD Vance in February to find an arrangement to save it.
Oracle is a natural contender to be a part of a deal for TikTok. The company is already a tech partner of TikTok in the United States, and it bid for the app when Mr. Trump, in his first term, sought to force a sale from ByteDance.
The White House, not Congress, will ultimately decide whether a deal for TikTok can proceed. It is unclear if Oracle is currently interested in the app. TikTok and Oracle declined to comment. The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As the April 5 deadline approaches, Republican lawmakers and other China hawks who supported the law have voiced concerns that TikTok and ByteDance might try to strike a deal with the Trump administration that would maintain Chinese influence over the app and its mighty algorithm.
Lawmakers say a deal that does not meet the requirements of the law will undermine national security and could lead to shareholder lawsuits against the technology companies that distribute and host TikTok in the United States.
“The law is clear: Any deal must eliminate Chinese influence and control over the app to safeguard our interests,” Representative John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who heads the House committee focused on China, wrote in an opinion column on Tuesday in The National Review. He said he was “committed to ensuring that any deal with TikTok meets the clear statutory requirements laid out by Congress.”
Mr. Vance told NBC News last week that by April 5 “there will almost certainly be a high-level agreement that I think satisfies our national security concerns, allows there to be a distinct American TikTok enterprise.”
Mr. Trump said this month that while he was optimistic that TikTok would strike a deal before the deadline, he was open to extending the deadline.
Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder and chief technology officer, joined Mr. Trump for an announcement in January about a $100 billion artificial intelligence initiative. At the event, Mr. Trump mentioned that Elon Musk or Oracle could buy TikTok and emphasized his “right to make a deal.”
Mr. Trump’s pause in enforcing the law has raised questions about whether the president is abiding by the rule of law or stretching the bounds of executive power. Some experts have said the conflict represents the beginnings of a constitutional crisis.
TikTok has argued for at least a year that a sale of the company would be impossible, in part because the Chinese government would not allow the export of TikTok’s all-important algorithm.
