New TikTok headquarters will likely be based in Texas, Trump said

TikTok’s new headquarters will likely be based in Texas after President Trump finalized a deal for Oracle Corps. and Walmart to purchase the popular social media app.

On Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted that he had spoken to Trump about bringing the headquarters to the Lone Star State.

Today I talked to @realDonaldTrump about the @tiktok_us deal.

I let him know that if he approves the deal Texas would be the perfect place for the HQ.

We’ll see. 👀#TikTok

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 19, 2020

Coming in just under Trump’s Sept. 20 deadline to broker a deal, he announced the two companies will acquire stakes in the new company, TikTok Global.  The video app was set to be banned on Saturday if a deal wasn’t agreed on in time for the app to be purchased by a U.S.-based company and approved by the United States Commerce Department.

It is unknown where in Texas the potential headquarters will be located or when it may actually open, but Trump promised the new company will hire 25,000 Americans, Bloomberg reported. The board will be American-run, though ByteDance Ltd. who originally owned the company, will remain a major shareholder.

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TikTok currently has an office in Austin that opened earlier this year with about 2,500 employees.

As part of the deal, TikTok Global would donate $5 billion to an educational fund based in Texas.

As part of the new deal, Oracle will get access to TikTok’s source code and updates to make sure the company isn’t using the app to gather data from its users. Earlier this year, Trump raised security alarms about the Chinese-owned app, saying it posed a national security risk.

Security experts however said this source of concern isn’t resolved with the new deal because “there are plenty of instances where U.S. companies bundle data and put national security at risk. Picking the odd foreign company that does this and targeting them won’t help,” former chief information security officer at Twitter Michael Cotes told Bloomberg.

Taylor Pettaway is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | [email protected] | @TaylorPettaway