Oracle CEO donated $250k to Lindsey Graham's re-election campaign just hours before the company announced lucrative deal to become TikTok's US tech provider - which the senator was 'pivotal' in brokering
A top executive at one of the nation’s leading tech companies donated $250,000 to a super Political Action Committee supporting Senator Lindsey Graham’s re-election campaign, as his company closed in on a coveted deal to become TikTok’s US technology partner. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made the quarter of a million dollar donation to the Security is Strength PAC, which is paying for ads supporting Graham in his reelection bid, The Verge reported. The donation, described as unusually large for Ellison, was made on September 14 – just hours before Oracle announced it had been selected by the Beijing-based social media platform TikTok to be its cloud technology provider. Oracle staved off competition from the likes of Microsoft and a number of other high-profile bidders in order to save the popular app, after President Trump pledged to ban it in the US over data-sharing concerns unless it was sold by its China-based parent company, Byte Dance. Ellison’s company’s deal was applauded by the