Oracle Spends $11 Million on Federal Lobbying, Focuses on TikTok Data Storage Deal

Oracle Corporation spent approximately $11 million on federal lobbying during 2024, maintaining its position among an exclusive group of companies that exceeded eight figures in annual lobbying expenditures. This lobbying investment placed Oracle alongside tech giants including Amazon, Google’s parent company Alphabet, and traditional corporate lobbying powerhouses like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and General Motors. Oracle has maintained at least $11 million in annual federal lobbying spending for each of the previous four full years (2021-2024), demonstrating sustained investment in government influence operations.

During 2024, Oracle deployed 64 different federal lobbyists across 11 lobbying firms, plus its own in-house government affairs office, during the first half of the year alone. A significant portion of Oracle’s 2024 lobbying focused on TikTok-related issues, with Oracle conducting at least four meetings with Senate aides primarily to discuss the technical aspects of its “Project Texas” data storage arrangement. These meetings included staffers for the Senate Commerce Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, the two committees with jurisdiction over TikTok regulation and national security concerns.

Records show Oracle paid $90,000 to lobbying firm Fierce Government Relations and $80,000 to Polaris National Security during the first three months of 2024 specifically for TikTok-related lobbying work. These targeted lobbying expenditures came as Congress debated legislation to force ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a ban, positioning Oracle as an alternative solution through its data storage partnership worth approximately $1 billion.

Oracle’s massive lobbying apparatus serves multiple business objectives, including protecting its multibillion-dollar intelligence community cloud contracts, securing favorable outcomes in TikTok regulatory disputes, influencing federal technology procurement policies, and shaping data privacy legislation that affects its data brokerage operations. The company’s $11 million annual lobbying budget complements Larry Ellison’s personal political donations totaling tens of millions of dollars, creating a comprehensive influence operation targeting both legislative and executive branch decision-makers.

This sustained lobbying investment exemplifies how major government contractors use political influence to secure and maintain lucrative contracts. Oracle’s lobbying expenditures, combined with Ellison’s political fundraising for Trump and Tim Scott, create multiple channels for influencing federal procurement decisions, regulatory outcomes, and policy debates. The concentration of lobbying resources on TikTok issues during 2024 demonstrated Oracle’s ability to position itself as an indispensable intermediary in national security disputes, converting regulatory threats against foreign companies into business opportunities for politically-connected American corporations.