Microsoft Corp. has announced that it will not acquire TikTok. In a statement posted on Microsoft's corporate website, the company confirmed that TikTok owner ByteDance has declined the proposal. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that Oracle has won the race to acquire the popular app's U.S. operations.

"We are confident that our proposal was in the best interest of TikTok's users while protecting national security interests. To do so, we needed to make significant changes to ensure that the service meets the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combating disinformation, and we made these principles clear in our August statement."

"We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these critical areas."

According to anonymous sources speaking to the Washington Post, ByteDance has proposed to the U.S. government that it not sell its U.S. operations entirely, but retain ownership and transfer cloud management to an American company. If this is true, a partnership with Oracle makes sense. It also makes a lot of sense for other reasons: according to the same Washington Post report, Oracle executives are "close" to U.S. President Donald Trump.

In September, President Trump issued an executive order banning transactions related to TikTok. A similar order also targeted Tencent-owned WeChat.