Editor's note: ...builders of AI infrastructure in the technology industry, channeling tens of billions of dollars into vast data center facilities
packed with Nvidia GPUs to supply the raw computing power demanded by leading AI labs and companies. Through
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure the company is constructing multi-gigawatt facilities across the US and abroad, securing landmark multi-year contracts including a reported
$300 billion agreement with OpenAI that anchors the Stargate initiative (a
$500 billion project to build out large scale data centers), while simultaneously embedding advanced AI capabilities directly into its flagship databases and enterprise applications. This dual strategy of hyper-scale capacity and software intelligence has transformed Oracle from a
traditional database giant into a critical enabler of the current AI boom, even as the scale of its capital spending tests investor confidence in the race to meet insatiable demand for training and inference power.
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The Rise of the Ellison Empire
July 24, 2026 | By
Martin Armstrong
There was a time when America's industrial titans built railroads, steel mills, and oil companies. Today, influence is measured in data, a
rtificial intelligence, cloud computing, media, and information. Few families illustrate that transformation better than the Ellisons.
Larry Ellison built Oracle from a small software company into one of the world’s largest technology firms. His background and rags-to-riches story are quite interesting. Today Oracle is one of the dominant providers of enterprise databases and cloud infrastructure, serving governments, financial institutions, healthcare providers, defense contractors, and many of the world’s largest corporations. Oracle’s software touches enormous portions of the global economy. When governments collect taxes, hospitals manage patient records, banks process transactions, or corporations analyze data, Oracle systems are often operating behind the scenes. [
Editor's note: Oracle's first contract was with the CIA for $50,000.]