Oracle on Tuesday announced an expanded collaboration with OpenAI that brings the artificial intelligence lab's ChatGPT and Codex into the software maker's applications to make databases more actionable.
Mahesh Thiagarajan, Oracle's president of Cloud Infrastructure, told CNBC at Oracle AI World in Las Vegas that using ChatGPT "allows anybody to build an application, deploy it, manage it."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is set to join Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouyrk on stage for an Oracle AI World keynote on Tuesday at 12:40 p.m. ET.
For OpenAI, the announcement represents another example of the frontier lab's push into the enterprise market, just one day after its key competitor, Anthropic, filed its S-1 as it heads toward an initial public offering.
Oracle's database plays a crucial role in underpinning businesses across healthcare and finance in logging and securing data.
Thiagarajan said his team observed OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model get trained at Oracle's Stargate data center campus in Abilene, Texas, and could see the real-time benefits.
"More businesses are choosing OpenAI as we make it easier to put AI to work through the tools and systems they already use," said Greg Brockman, president and co-founder of OpenAI, in the press release.
Oracle also said Tuesday that it is making different hardware accessible on its cloud infrastructure, including Google's tensor processing unit AI chips and OpenAI's Jalapeño chip.
"Now customers can actually have infinite possibilities in terms of how they can drive AI," Thiagarajan said.
It is the first time Google's custom chips will run on another hyperscaler's cloud, and illustrates how the companies are increasingly looking for opportunities to get their hardware in the hands of the frontier labs.
Thiagarajan added that the scarcity of chips remains an ongoing issue and that customers like OpenAI can benefit from having different accelerators to choose from. When asked whether this marks a pivot away from Nvidia GPUs, Thiagarajan said no, adding that Nvidia chips are "the best, most fungible," and that the AI market remains incredibly large.
OpenAI's Jalapeno chip and Cerebras will also run on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The Cerebras deal is material, but the AI chipmaker won't be disclosing the scale because it's in a quiet period, a Cerebras spokesperson said.
Cerebras stock climbed about 8% following the news. Oracle shares were up nearly 5% on Tuesday.
The announcement comes seven months after market-leading cloud Amazon Web Services announced plans to bring Cerebras hardware into its data centers, a major point of validation.
Thiagarajan also addressed Oracle's multibillion New Mexico data center dubbed Project Jupiter and the ongoing pushback it's receiving from the local community. He said Jupiter represents just one of the 30-40 different data center projects in development, per quarter, for the company.
"We're actually not too worried about what we're doing because I think we're building global infrastructure," he said.
A hearing to address air quality permitting is scheduled for Dec. 7 in Sunland Park, where the controversial data center has already broken ground. The political pushback tied to the project prompted Oracle to deliver a force majeure notice to its backer Blue Owl Capital last month. Right now, Oracle maintains that the project is on schedule.
Investors are now counting down to Oracle's investor day, where investors will want to see if the company can back its fiscal year 2030 revenue targets and if the margin profile of its cloud deals has changed due to the rising cost of capital.
Bank of America analysts wrote to clients that updates on Oracle's major data center projects are among the topics they expect clarity on at the meeting.
Oracle shares are down more than 30% this year due in part to concerns about how the company plans to finance its ambitious digital infrastructure pipeline.
