Oracle is indeed part of an upcoming deal for a US spin-off of TikTok, The Wall Street Journal reports, as a member of a consortium that also includes Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz. The US and China are finalizing the framework for a deal that would create a new US entity, with American investors holding a roughly 80% ownership stake.

(Phillip Faraone/Getty Images)

 

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Hey Snackers,

A LinkedIn post by the proud mother of a GameStop employee was so heartfelt that it inspired GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen to give the teenage employee a surprise gift so he could get to work more easily. (And the gift was arguably even better than a McDonald’s lunch and a pair of Cohen’s preowned underwear.) Whether it’s due to good karma or just good earnings, GameStop has been on a strong winning streak lately.

US stocks did little of note on Tuesday, with traders seemingly content to sit on their hands ahead of the Federal Reserve decision this afternoon. The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all declined 0.1% on the session.

 
TIKTOK, ON THE CLOCK

The consortium slated to take over TikTok in the US is emerging 

Oracle is indeed part of an upcoming deal for a US spin-off of TikTok, The Wall Street Journal reports, as a member of a consortium that also includes Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz. The US and China are finalizing the framework for a deal that would create a new US entity, with American investors holding a roughly 80% ownership stake.

  • Oracle has long been in the running, along with executives close to the Trump administration including not only members of the Ellison family but also CEO Safra Katz, who served on President Trump’s 2016 transition team.
  • Andreessen Horowitz, the storied venture capital firm and the largest in the field, also has significant links to the administration in addition to lots of ties to “First Buddy” Elon Musk. 
  • Silver Lake is a major player in the private equity space; it’s incidentally the owner of Endeavor, a big talent agency in the entertainment industry, and took it private in March of this year.
  • Existing investors in ByteDance, including Susquehanna International, KKR, and General Atlantic, would also have skin in the game.
  • The remaining 20% would be owned by Chinese investors.

Under the current structure of the deal, US users would have to download and use a new app, which TikTok is now testing. The entity would have a largely American board, including one member nominated by the US government, the WSJ reports.

THE TAKEAWAY

Trump has extended the deadline for a deal until December 16. TikTok engineers would have to recreate the content recommendation algorithms for the new app, licensing tech from ByteDance. 

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WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

What we’re really using AI chatbots for

In the past year, we’ve watched a lot of demos from the companies creating the AI chatbots and agents of tomorrow to showcase some of the ways we could use the tech, like OpenAI’s very relatable live example of its ChatGPT Agent helping an employee buy an expensive tuxedo and book hotels in Maui, and we’ve heard a lot of news reports about the most alarming uses of chatbots, from ChatGPT’s role in a death by suicide to Meta’s chatbot allowing “sensual” talk with kids. But while we hear the most about these disturbing incidents, they remain outliers. Well, now we’re starting to get a better picture of how people are really using chatbots on the daily.

On Monday, OpenAI released the results of a wide-ranging study that used AI to analyze 1 million chat transcripts, and here are the takeaways: