“AI will change everything,” Oracle founder Larry Ellison announced on Tuesday. Artificial intelligence has certainly changed his personal wealth. Oracle shares shot up nearly 40 per cent by Wednesday morning, putting its market capitalisation a whisker away from $1tn, and making Ellison’s 41 per cent stake over $100bn more valuable.
If the defining moment in AI was the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, Oracle’s earnings on Tuesday might be a close second. The company said that it had tripled its contracted future revenue to $455bn in just three months, blindsiding investors and analysts. Big customers are begging Oracle to build data centres for their AI models. Ellison, who still chairs the company, paraphrased one: “We’ll take all the capacity you have that’s currently not being used anywhere in the world. We don’t care.”
That reflects the fact that AI is part miracle, part mania. But Oracle has weathered investment frenzies, and their unwinding, before. After the 2000 tech bubble popped, the company’s share price collapsed nearly 80 per cent in a year. Yet its revenue fell just 14 per cent over two years, then recovered. With four exceptions, it has grown every year since.