Larry Ellison’s Ticketok Bid Potts Oracle President Back in Spotlight

        Oracle<span class="company-name-type"> Corp.</span>


    Orcl <span>-1.42%</span>


  Chasing co-founder Larry Ellison with TeakTalk could earn him two awards at once: a lucrative new customer for his company's lagging cloud-computing business and a win over a fierce competitor. 

Mr. Ellison maneuvers Oracle in front of Microsoft Corp.

Msft -2.95%

In the race to become Tickcock’s American tech partner, and personally sign a preliminary agreement to lobby for President Trump, people familiar with the negotiations said.

Under current deal terms, Oracle and Walmart Inc.

Will take a combined 20% stake in a new US-based Tittock. Oracle will guarantee the security of American user information to meet the concerns of the White House, so that the Chinese government can get access to such data. But parties including Tiktok’s Beijing-based owner, ByteDance Ltd, are still finalizing their agreement and require approval from both the US and Chinese governments.

Oracle has not said what it will pay for its planned 12.5% ​​stake, although Tiktok’s total valuation for the investment could top $ 7 billion based on estimates. An initial public offering from TikTok in the US, which states the initial deal will take place within a year, may refund some of that money.

Winning the Tiktok competition would pay other dividends for Mr. Ellison, greatly increasing Oracle’s efforts to gain traction in the hot sphere of cloud-computing – which he once dismissed as a craze.

As he plays catch-up with market leaders Amazon.com Inc.

And Microsoft, Mr. Ellison has already deployed hardball tactics for which he has long been known. Over the past few years, Oracle has been illegally offering salary increases to hundreds of employees from Amazon Web Services, the online retailer’s cloud arm. And four years ago, Oracle spent about $ 9 billion on cloud-software provider NetSuite Inc., its largest acquisition ever.

Oracle is also trying to land a variety of high-profile cloud clients that bring in large amounts of revenue as well as massive rights. This year, it won business from Zoom Video Communications Inc.

When the videoconferencing app needs additional capacity to handle skyrocketing demand during an epidemic.

After Mr. Trump indicated his support for Oracle’s Tiktok system, the American software company said in a statement that its work with Zoom affected the results.

This summer drama has returned the billionaire to the center of action in the tech industry.

One of the wealthiest people in the world, Mr. Ellison had long sought to keep Oracle in the public eye. The company paid for the naming for the San Francisco Giants’ home baseball park and the National Basketball Association’s Oakland home of the Golden State Warriors before relocating to San Francisco. Mr. Ellison himself sits on the board of Tesla, one of the largest companies in Silicon Valley Inc.

But Oracle’s core business, database software for companies, is nothing compared to technology related to the younger generation of businesses like Facebook Of inc

Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

“Larry wants to be in the news. It doesn’t matter how many billions it will cost, ”said Osama Elkady, a longtime Oracle executive who left in 2013 and is now CEO at data-analytics company Incorta Inc. and Oracle, Said, it is taken to show. Seriously cloudy. “It may give them new blood,” Mr. Elkady said.

Oracle declined to provide Mr. Ellison for comment.

A college dropout, m. Allison is among a small group of Fake Tech entrepreneurs who led the way in Silicon Valley’s rise and saw how people live and do business. His competitive streak is legendary. In 2000, Mr. Ellison admitted hiring private investigators to watch at Microsoft, calling it a “civil duty”. Investigators found that Microsoft helped fund companies that supported Microsoft in a fight with the Department of Justice.

Mr. Ellison is a fond sports mogul who had his greatest success with the America’s Cup sailing competition. Along with his willingness to spend money and get rid of the tuss, he made a spectacular payoff to woo some of Australia and New Zealand’s best players — a 2010 victory that returned the trophy to American hands. Mr. Ellison himself served as the crew on board.

He is also fond of basketball. He has a hoops court mounted on his yacht, retrieving balls with the help of a powerboat that goes overboard. Mr. Ellison has repeatedly tried to buy a National Basketball Association franchise, but recently lost to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer over the Los Angeles Clippers.

TikTok may be Mr. Allison’s revenge. Microsoft was the prime candidate to join TikTok earlier this summer to address US national security concerns. Its current CEO, Satya Nadella, also spoke to Mr. Trump to negotiate the deal.

The Microsoft deal stalled when China imposed an export ban on software that uses TikTok to recommend videos to users, an algorithm seen as the app’s secret sauce. Microsoft saw it as a deal breaker because it felt that control over algorithms was needed to address national security concerns, people familiar with the matter. Poll left Mr. Ellison in position.

With the deadline for a deal to face a partial ban from Tikotok, Mr. Ellison spoke on the phone with Mr. Trump, for whom he hosted a fundraiser this year, people familiar with the conversation .

Mr. Ellison also proposed to Mr. Trump that companies set up a $ 5 billion education fund, an idea the president later deferred.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Trump offered his blessing for a deal that would make Oracle Ticketcock’s security partner and provide cloud-computing services that, analysts predict, would represent a multibillion-dollar business over the next few years. Can.

Mark Mordler, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research, says that TeakTalk will strengthen Oracle’s credibility as one of the few providers that can address government security concerns. “This is not commodity cloud computing. Oracle can make good money on this business. ”

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Write Aaron Tilley on [email protected] and Stu Woo on [email protected]