Thursday, September 25, 2025

Oracle won a big role in the new TikTok. Follow the money behind the deal.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2025

Oracle invested millions in government influence before winning a major stake in TikTok

Larry Ellison and Donald Trump in the White House

Oracle isn’t quite a household name on par with other American technology companies such as Microsoft, Meta or Apple.

But Oracle nevertheless ranks among the most influential corporate forces in America — something underscored by the leading role the company is poised to play in President Donald Trump’s deal to decouple TikTok’s U.S. operations from its Chinese parent, ByteDance.

Oracle is slated to house the data of American TikTok users on its cloud computing servers. The Trump administration has also confirmed that Oracle will be a cornerstone partner and investor in the new TikTok spin-off entity, which will oversee the security and algorithm that undergirds the social video platform.

Dave Levinthal breaks down six ways Oracle has helped make itself a political force in Washington, D.C.

Oracle found Larry Ellison has forged a strong connection with President Donald Trump, although Ellison has not been a Trump megadonor.
Oracle has spent at least $11 million on federal-level government lobbying during each of the past four full years. And the company is on pace to match that level of spending in 2025.
Oracle sponsors the Oracle America Inc. Political Action Committee, which typically contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars each election cycle to federal political candidates and party committees
Hundreds of other Oracle executives and employees have made sizable political contributions of late, including former CEO Safra Catz, now the company’s executive vice chairwoman. Catz, who served on Trump’s 2016 presidential transition team, gave $1 million last year to Preserve America PAC, a super PAC advocated against the election of former Vice President Kamala Harris and, earlier, President Joe Biden before he quit the race.
Trump and several members of Congress hold shares of Oracle stock. Trump's most recent personal financial disclosure indicates he owned Oracle shares worth between $32,004 and $130,000 during 2024.
Oracle has engaged in Trump-friendly public relations activity, including lauding “President Trump’s leadership” on a health care data initiative and sponsoring the June military parade in Washington, D.C

Energy Secretary Chris Wright is a longtime fossil fuel advocate and outspoken critic of climate policy. During his confirmation hearing he denounced the so-called “green new scam” — climate-preservations proposals he sees as costly and ineffective. Instead, Wright has endorsed a multiresource strategy that combines finite sources like oil, gas, and coal with nuclear, hydropower and other resources to meet the nation’s energy needs.

In 1992, Wright founded Pinnacle Technologies, a company that pioneered shale gas extraction through fracking. Wright served as CEO of Pinnacle and chairman of Stroud Energy, also involved in the extraction of shale gas, until 2006.

Wright then founded the oilfield services company Liberty Energy (first known as Liberty Oilfield Services) in 2011. Eight years later, Wright and the “Liberty Team” took to social media to demonstrate the safety of fracking to pro-climate critics by drinking fracking fluid, which contains a cocktail of bleach, soap and hazardous chemicals. The company reportedly fracks 20 percent of U.S. onshore wells today.

His appointment to the Department of Energy is his first governmental position (other than a stint on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2020 to 2024), and he has vowed to help lead a nation ready to “drill, baby, drill.”

Carolyn Neugarten took a deep dive into Wright's background and efforts to influence politics.

Follow the money

Before his appointment, Wright served on the board of the nuclear technology company Oklo, working to create neutron microreactors that can operate for long periods without refueling. Oklo went public in 2023 via a SPAC merger with AltC Acquisition Corporation, founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Wright held unvested restricted stock units in Oklo valued between $250,000 and $500,000 while he was director.
As CEO of Liberty Energy, Wright earned $5.6 million in 2023, and he owns stock in the company worth between $5 million and $25 million.
In November 2024, Wright donated $50,000 to the Americans for Prosperity Action Committee, following previous contributions of $100,000 in November 2024 and $25,000 in October 2020. Americans for Prosperity is a conservative advocacy group founded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who made their money in fossil fuels. The group has consistently opposed climate regulations, particularly those introduced during the Obama administration. AFP was one of the most vocal critics of the proposed cap-and-trade policy, organizing over 80 events nationwide to protest “global warming alarmism.” The organization is also a major proponent of the Keystone XL pipeline.
In the summer of 2016, Wright swore off future support of Trump. But in 2024, he made significant personal contributions to Trump and other Republican candidates, including a $228,390 donation to the Trump 47 Committee and another $175,000 contribution linked to a fundraiser in August 2024 co-hosted by his wife, Liz Wright. In September 2024 he donated $25,000 to the Truth and Courage PAC, a group that campaigned for Ted Cruz’s Senate re-election.

Why It Matters

Additional profiles

Tom Homan, border czar
Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the Middle East
Mike Huckabee, ambassador to Israel
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, secretary of labor
J.D. Vance, vice president
Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader
John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA
Doug Collins, secretary of veterans affairs
Hakeem Jeffries, House minority leader
Lee Zeldin, EPA administrator
Howard Lutnick, secretary of commerce
Mike Waltz, national security advisor
Marco Rubio, secretary of state
Sean Duffy, secretary of transportation
Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff
Tulsi Gabbard, director national intelligence
Kash Patel, director of the FBI
Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and human services
Linda McMahon, secretary of education
Elise Stefanik, ambassador to the United Nations
Doug Burgum, secretary of the interior
Pete Hegseth, secretary of defense
Pam Bondi, attorney general

Rep. Rich McCormick was two years late reporting two dozen stock transactions

Another member of Congress — this time, a Republican who represents a swath of suburbs north of Atlanta — has violated a conflict-of-interest and transparency law with botched stock-trade disclosures.

Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia failed to properly report his purchases of two dozen individual stocks from March 2023, according to Dave Levinthal's analysis of congressional financial disclosure records.

McCormick last year disclosed the trades in his annual personal financial report to Congress, which all members of Congress are mandated to submit.

But he waited almost two and a half years past a separate 45-day federal deadline for publicly revealing details about individual stock trades in what are known as “periodic transaction reports,” as required by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012. The PTRs are a “contemporaneous reporting requirement” designed by Congress to ensure the public can quickly determine whether a lawmaker’s personal financial trades conflict with their public duties.

Taken together, McCormick’s stock purchases are worth between $24,024 and $360,000. (Lawmakers are only required to disclose the value of their stock trades in broad ranges.)

A second-term lawmaker, McCormick is a member of the Armed Services Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee and Science, Space and Technology Committee; some of the transactions involve shares of companies whose industries fall under the jurisdiction of one or more of these committees.

McCormick’s congressional office acknowledged a phone inquiry from OpenSecrets but did not otherwise respond to follow-up phone messages or emailed questions.

The congressman’s stock disclosure snafu coincides with a bipartisan push in Congress to ban federal lawmakers from trading stocks altogether.

What else we're reading

One of Congress’ Most Active Stock Traders Is Selling Off All Her Individual Stocks (NOTUS)

Lutnick’s Family Firm Holds Stake in China-Tied Satellogic (Sludge)

Here’s what happens when big-time lobbyists become big-name Trump officials (Politico)

DCCC crushes NRCC in August fundraising (Punchbowl News)

OpenSecrets in the News

See our media citations from outlets around the nation this week:

Jimmy Kimmel's return dials up the heat of Disney's fight with local broadcasters (Business Insider)

Sinclair is controlled by executive chairman David Smith and his family, who've long supported the Republican Party. As Sinclair's CEO, Smith told Trump in 2016 that "we are here to deliver your message," The Guardian reported. Sinclair then told its local news anchors to deliver public service messages warning about "biased and false news" after Trump critiqued the media. Nexstar is generally seen in the industry as less political, though founder and CEO Perry Sook has historically donated to Republicans far more often than Democrats, per OpenSecrets.

How Jimmy Kimmel Might Have Just Been Sacrificed for a Multibillion-Dollar TV Deal (The Hollywood Reporter)

Sook’s role on one side of one of the most rancorously partisan Hollywood-Washington fights in decades is unexpected. The tycoon can be hard to pin down politically. According to OpenSecrets, he has made campaign contributions to a mix of Republican and Democrat Congressional candidates over the years, from Mitch McConnell and Greg Walden on the right to Patrick Leahy and Chuck Schumer on the left. And ironically, Sook has often tried to find the middle ground between ideological poles at NewsNation, which he has pitched both inside and outside the industry as sitting appealingly between MSNBC and Fox News.

Is Larry Ellison Building a MAGA Media Empire? (Newsweek)

Separately, it's notable that Paramount and Warner Bros. fall under the ownership of David Ellison, who is not an ideological clone of his dad. While he has appointed Keneth R. Weinstein of the right-leaning Hudson Institute as CBS ombudsman and is said to eyeing a purchase of the center-right Free Press news outlet, the younger Ellison has made 56 donations since 2024 — all of which have gone to Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, according to OpenSecrets.

Ukrainian refugee’s train stabbing death becomes early flashpoint in 2026 North Carolina Senate race (The Associated Press)

Some pundits think spending in next year’s race could reach $1 billion, blowing past the $515.5 million spent overall on a U.S. Senate race in Georgia in 2020 won by Democrat Jon Ossoff in a runoff, according to data from Open Secrets, which tracks political spending.

Everytown wants stricter laws on guns. Now, they’ll also teach you to use one. (USA Today)

Last year, Everytown spent about $2.3 million on lobbying the federal government, according to Open Secrets. That’s compared to $7 million by the National Shooting Sports Foundation or $2.4 million by the Gun Owners of America or $2 million by the NRA.

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