Larry Ellison joins Peter Thiel in Trump's camp

[LessAspin]

Larry Ellison, the co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corp., is a fierce competitor, to put it mildly. This is a man who helped build a $177-billion company, and who likes to unwind by funding ludicrous hydrofoiling racing catamarans.

Increasingly, Ellison’s company is competing with the cloud computing wing of Amazon.com Inc., and he does it with zeal. Oracle funded an anti-Amazon group called the “Free and Fair Markets Initiative” to attack the rival. Oracle also worked desperately to derail Amazon’s bid for JEDI, a lucrative Defense Department cloud contract, going so far as to sue the federal government, alleging it illegally favored Amazon.

Now, Ellison is making friends with his enemy’s enemy, who happens to be the president of the United States. On Wednesday, Ellison will host a fundraiser for President Trump at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Top contributors are expected to shell out $250,000 for a photo, a golf outing and a round-table discussion...

Is Ellison’s interest in Trump inspired by their shared contempt for Bezos? Who knows? On the one hand, it’s not out of character for Ellison to raise money for Republicans. He backed Marco Rubio in 2016.

Then again, backing Trump is uniquely controversial. Recode called Ellison “one of Silicon Valley’s most eccentric and independent-minded leaders,” observing that those traits might make him immune to “blowback” from Oracle workers. Silicon Valley workers in general have become more activist; in November 2018 Google employees walked out over the company’s sexual harassment policies...

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-15/larry-ellison-trump

Link to tweet

From Cambridge Analytica to meddling in the Iowa Caucus this seems like a trend.

[PoliticAverse]

1. So not surprising. n/t

[SharonAnn]

2. The tech bro's want to control everything.

[argyl]

3. No shit. These bastards make the late 19th Century robber barons look like a mom and pop operation.

[LessAspin]

4. Under The Radar Corruption

With so much blatant corruption taking place in this regime this one flew in under the radar...

Link to tweet

No. Not under the Mackinac Bridge. Under the radar...

How Trump's favorite tech company could win TikTok

Oracle is a rare creature: a tech giant that's managed to remain fully in President Trump's good graces. Now, that position could help it end up acquiring TikTok over Microsoft.

Between the lines: Typically, a company's relationship with the president would have little bearing on who prevails in competing M&A bids. But these are atypical times.

What's happening: Oracle has been holding talks with other investors on putting together a bid for TikTok, the Chinese-owned social video app that Trump intends to ban on national security grounds unless it's sold to an American company by next month.

Trump endorsed the idea of the deal this week, calling Oracle founder and Trump fundraiser Larry Ellison a "tremendous guy" and saying, "Oracle would be certainly somebody that could handle it."

The development pits Oracle against Microsoft, which is already engaged in talks with both Beijing-based TikTok owner ByteDance and the White House on a deal. Other tech companies including Twitter have also been rumored to be potentially interested.

The catch: The White House has an unusual amount of say in picking winners and losers in the competition for TikTok because of the mechanism for reviewing any proposed deal...

https://www.axios.com/how-trumps-favorite-tech-company-could-win-tiktok-7a42b950-e0a5-446d-b49e-21edd083d116.html