Popular short-video app TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance, said on Thursday it plans to open its first European data center in Ireland with an investment of about 420 million euros.
Under fire from U.S. President Donald Trump over national security risks, TikTok is in talks with Microsoft about selling its U.S. operations. Trump said he will ban the service in the United States on Sept. 15 if there was no sale.
The data center in Ireland will create hundreds of new jobs, enable faster loading time and safely store European user data, Roland Cloutier, global chief information security officer of TikTok, wrote in a blog post.
"This data center signals our long-term commitment to Ireland and we expect the data center to open and be operational by early 2022," Cloutier said.
Ireland is one of Europe's biggest hubs for data centers and hosts operations for major technology companies such as Amazon , Facebook and Alphabet Inc's Google.
ByteDance said on Monday it was considering moving TikTok's headquarters overseas, following a British media report that the unit could relocate to London. (Reuters)
Source: www.businessworld.ie
