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Today on the podcast I want to talk about Oracle and OpenAI, who recently we found OpenAI has agreed to pay Oracle $30 billion. This is an absolutely insane, you know, announcement basically. But the interesting thing was right after it came out, it basically came up because Oracle released some filings to the SEC where they said, you know, we have a $30 billion contract. And based off of that, Oracle's stock stock price skyrocketed, making the owner of Oracle the Rick the second richest man in the world after Elon Musk. So all of this is part of a much bigger 500 billion dollar project which the Wall Street Journal yesterday said was delayed and is off to a bad start. What exactly are they building that cost this much money? Where? Who is the customer for this $30 billion? All of that we're going to be breaking down on the podcast today and of course, all of the drama from the Wall Street Journal saying that maybe this is, you know, smoke and mirrors off to a bad start. This isn't going to be as good as you basically were told when they made this big kind of Stargate announcement earlier this year. So we're going to be diving into all of that. Before we do, I wanted to mention if you want to try any of the Latest models from OpenAI to Anthropic to Cohere, Deepseek, Google, I would love for you to try out my platform, which is AI Box AI. It's in beta right now and essentially allows you to access the top 40 AI models. You can compare all of the models. We have benchmark data. We have basically everything that you need for text, image, audio, and you can chat with it all in the same thread. So it's super useful. This is something that I hope saves people a lot of money. Basically you don't need subscriptions to 20 different platforms. You can have one subscription for $20 a month and get access to all of the top models. You could chat with them all in the same thread, which is so much more useful. You can just switch the model mid conversation. So if you want to check it out, there's a link in the description to AI Box AI and let me know what you think. All right, let's get into this 30 billion deal that's going on with Oracle and OpenAI. So basically, Wall Street Journal reports that, you know, everything is not going to plan with the $500 billion Stargate announcement that Sam Altman, Oracle and SoftBank made earlier this year. Sam Altman came on and essentially cleared the air. He went on Twitter and said Quote, we have signed a deal for an additional 4.5 gigawatts of capacity with Oracle as part of Stargate. Easy to throw around numbers, but this is a gigantic infrastructure project. Some progress photos from Abilene. So this is being built out in Abilene, Texas. And he shares a couple pictures, of course, one of just like the, the wires of the servers, but again, another of like an aerial view of exactly what they're building, which is an absolutely massive compound. This thing is huge and there's a ton of buildings that are already up. There's a ton more space for way more capacity that is getting built out. Right? This, the way these things work is they, they kind of roll in phases. So it's not like everything, start to finish is going to be ready at the same time. They'll get certain buildings done and actually get them into production before others. Now, the Wall Street Journal said this was off to a rocky start. They weren't going to be able to get things online when they were hoping for. I, I think Sam Altman basically had a response to that, but before I get to that, I want to say 5 or 4.5 gigawatts of capacity that is enough like basically energy to power 4 million different homes. This is like two Hoover dams gigawatts of capacity. So this is like an absolutely massive project that is so much. And they're basically building out all of this capacity to fuel all of the AI projects that OpenAI is going to be needed to do in the future. And Oracle made a great partnership and is, you know, obviously going to be benefiting a lot. Their company is growing a ton based off of this, but also they have the experience, so it makes sense to make. It is basically a pretty good partner for the, for OpenAI. So I think this is funny. So back in June, Oracle told, pretty much made an SEC filing. They said that they signed a new deal that was going to generate about $30 billion a year in revenue. So of course their stock absolutely exploded. One thing that I, I just want to mention though, like, we okay, $30 billion, Oracle's big company, yada yada. I think it's like important to know how big $30 billion is even for Oracle as a company. So collectively, Oracle last year sold about $24.5 billion worth of cloud services in for its fiscal year 2025 to all of its customers combined. So all of its customers generated about $24 billion so far in, I guess, fiscal year 2025. And now they're adding $30 billion from one customer that is absolutely massive. So what's interesting here is, you know, it's definitely. It's part of the $500 billion data center project, but this is apparently not like this is in addition to that 500 billion. So they're doing a $500 billion project that's including SoftBank. This $30 billion is not including it. It's just basically they're paying this money in addition to just to get extra gigawatts online. And I'm assuming It's because the $500 billion thing is going to take so much longer. It's a huge project. There's a lot of stuff that's going on, but they probably could get, you know, something with $30 billion down faster and online quicker. So this is going to be pretty crazy. Definitely not a straightforward project. This is going to use a ton of time, energy and money to build this out, but it's important. And we're seeing, you know, basically we're seeing all of these AI companies integrate in this way where you see someone like OpenAI building out their own data centers. You have Amazon's and they got AI tools and they're relying heavily on aws. Google is greatly benefited because they have Google Cloud. And then basically you see companies like Amazon Web Servers or, sorry, Anthropic, they is partnering with Amazon Web Servers, AWS and they kind of have to use them in order to get the compute that they need. But it's a tricky situation. They keep getting billions of dollars invested into their company from AWS Anthropic has. But, like, they're kind of stuck with them. Right? And so it's kind of interesting to see a company like OpenAI partner with Oracle. Now, Oracle doesn't really have its, you know, some sort of headline AI competing product. They're just more in kind of the data center space. And so it feels like a better partnership. Whereas, like Anthropic, they're. They're going to Amazon, who also builds their own AI tools. So it's almost like a direct competitor in a way. Now, I will say it's not like everyone's using Amazon AI per se. It's not really the thing. But like built into Amazon's website, they have the Rufus AI and they have a bunch of other AI tools that, like, I think not a lot of people think about, but they actually use. And so Amazon is a competitor and I think will be more and more of a competitor in the future. So all this to say Oracle is spending very heavily in order to build out these data centers. Last year Oracle spent $21.2 billion just on CapEx. And that was, so that was last fiscal year. They're expecting to spend about $25 billion this year, so about $50 billion total. And almost all of this was on data centers. So this also doesn't include any land purchases. This is just like literally building out the data centers. Um, and so I think that that is absolutely a massive sum. So one other thing that's really interesting on this, Sam Altman said that he just last month he was talking and he said that OpenAI finally passed $10 billion in annual recurring revenue. So what's interesting about this is, yeah, this is huge because it's up from about $5.5 billion last year. So they're seeing huge growth. But this $10 billion, this is only a third of the commitment they just made to Oracle just for data centers. And this is in addition to all the other data center deals they have, of course, how much money they have to spend for data, for their researchers, for everything else they have going on. That's absolutely massive. They're, you know, they're 3x. Their annual revenue they just gave away in one deal to Oracle. So this is a huge amount of money. But I think it really goes to like, basically the picture that this is painting to me is that OpenAI sees absolutely massive potential, but it's all contingent on how much compute they can get access to. They know that they're going to be dead. If Elon Musk and XAI get access to more compute and basically can build out, you know, have more compute, build out more data centers than them, they're going to get killed. Because it kind of comes to this point where the bigger your scale is, the cheaper you can make your AI, the more you can compete, otherwise you're going to get crushed by all the competitors. And we know that these AI models, basically OpenAI has shown that, that if you give more compute to an AI model, it will get a better result. Like, and, and that's not cheap, right? So they're like if we, for every question you ask, Chat GPT, if we gave it a thousand dollars worth of compute, then the responses were like world class, PhD level insane. So they're amazing. But that is very expensive to the point where they were giving it like $10,000 to answer some questions. And on the benchmarks, those are the greatest questions that have ever been answered by AI. They're amazing, right? But that's $10,000 a question. It's like insane. So what is the solution? Right, we, we have access to super, super smart AI, but the cost is so astronomical it doesn't make any sense. So what's the solution? The solution basically is to spend billions and billions of dollars building out massive data centers, massive compute. You can make these things at scale so you can bring down the costs. You can make them cheaper and faster. And this essentially is going to be the solution that it seems like every company, every major AI company is trying to build towards or work towards. It's a huge, it's a huge expense, a lot of capex. But this is how they're trying to keep their competitive advantage and stay ahead. So all of this is amazing. If you are if you learned anything new from this episode and if you want to give back, the number one way to do it would be to leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcast. If you're on YouTube, drop a like and subscribe to the channel. It helps other people find the channel or find this podcast. So make sure to leave a rating, review or comment. Really, really appreciate them. And make sure to go check out AI box. AI if you want to get access to all of the top AI models in one place for one price, you don't have to pay for subscriptions to everything to test out all the top platforms. Thanks so much for tuning in today and I will catch you in the next episode.
Introduction
In this episode of The AI Podcast, the host explores the monumental $30 billion contract between Oracle and OpenAI. This deal not only signifies a major financial commitment but also highlights the strategic partnerships shaping the future of artificial intelligence. The discussion delves into the intricacies of the agreement, its implications for both companies, and the broader AI infrastructure landscape.
1. Overview of the Oracle-OpenAI Deal
The podcast kicks off with the announcement of Oracle's $30 billion contract with OpenAI. This colossal agreement was revealed through Oracle's SEC filings, leading to a significant surge in Oracle’s stock price. As a result, Oracle's owner, Rick, ascended to become the second richest person globally, trailing only behind Elon Musk ([00:01]).
Notable Quote:
"OpenAI has agreed to pay Oracle $30 billion. This is an absolutely insane announcement." – Host ([00:01])
2. The Larger $500 Billion Stargate Project
The $30 billion deal is a component of an even more ambitious $500 billion initiative known as the Stargate project, a collaboration between Sam Altman, Oracle, and SoftBank. Despite the grand vision, recent reports from the Wall Street Journal indicate that the project is experiencing delays and challenges, suggesting that the initial optimistic projections may be overly ambitious ([00:01]).
Notable Quote:
"The Wall Street Journal yesterday said was delayed and is off to a bad start." – Host ([00:01])
3. Infrastructure Expansion in Abilene, Texas
A significant portion of the discussion centers around the infrastructure developments in Abilene, Texas. Sam Altman has publicly stated that the deal includes an additional 4.5 gigawatts of capacity with Oracle, equating to the energy required to power four million homes ([00:01]). Visual progress includes images of extensive server installations and aerial views of the sprawling compound under construction.
Notable Quote:
"This is like an absolutely massive compound. This thing is huge and there's a ton of buildings that are already up." – Host ([00:01])
4. Financial Implications for Oracle
Oracle's financials are dramatically impacted by this deal. In fiscal year 2025, Oracle reported $24.5 billion in cloud services revenue. Adding $30 billion annually from OpenAI represents a significant boost, more than a 20% increase solely from this singular contract ([00:01]). This influx is separate from the ongoing $500 billion Stargate project, underscoring Oracle's heavy investment in AI infrastructure.
Notable Quote:
"Oracle last year sold about $24.5 billion worth of cloud services in fiscal year 2025 to all of its customers combined." – Host ([00:01])
5. Strategic Partnerships and Competitive Landscape
The host contrasts Oracle's partnership with OpenAI to other AI collaborations, such as Anthropic's reliance on AWS (Amazon Web Services). Unlike Oracle, AWS also develops its own AI tools, potentially creating conflicts of interest. Oracle's focus on data centers without competing AI products makes it a more compatible partner for OpenAI.
Notable Quote:
"It's almost like a direct competitor in a way." – Host ([00:01])
6. OpenAI's Revenue Growth and Investment Challenges
OpenAI has surpassed $10 billion in annual recurring revenue, a significant increase from $5.5 billion the previous year ([00:01]). However, the $30 billion commitment to Oracle, which is three times OpenAI's annual revenue, highlights the aggressive investment required to scale AI operations. This funding is crucial for expanding compute capabilities essential for maintaining a competitive edge.
Notable Quote:
"This is in addition to all the other data center deals they have, of course, how much money they have to spend for data, for their researchers, for everything else they have going on." – Host ([00:01])
7. The Compute Cost Conundrum
A major challenge discussed is the exorbitant cost of compute resources necessary for advanced AI models. The host highlights that providing high-quality, PhD-level responses can cost up to $10,000 per question, making scalability and cost-efficiency paramount ([00:01]). The solution lies in massive investments in data centers to achieve economies of scale and reduce per-unit costs.
Notable Quote:
"They're like if we gave it like $10,000 to answer some questions. And on the benchmarks, those are the greatest questions that have ever been answered by AI." – Host ([00:01])
8. Future Outlook and Industry Implications
The episode concludes by emphasizing the critical role of infrastructure investments in sustaining AI advancements. As OpenAI partners with Oracle to build expansive data centers, the focus remains on balancing enormous expenditures with the potential to drive innovation and maintain a competitive advantage in the AI sector.
Notable Quote:
"This is the solution that it seems like every company, every major AI company is trying to build towards or work towards." – Host ([00:01])
Conclusion
The $30 billion Oracle-OpenAI deal represents a significant milestone in the AI industry's infrastructure development. While the Stargate project faces challenges, the strategic partnership between Oracle and OpenAI underscores the importance of massive compute investments to propel AI advancements. As the landscape evolves, such collaborations will be pivotal in shaping the future capabilities and applications of artificial intelligence.
Speaker Attribution
All notable quotes and specific insights are attributed to the host, providing clarity and authenticity to the discussion.
Timestamps
All referenced quotes are marked with the timestamp [00:01], indicating their position in the podcast transcript.
Final Thoughts
This episode offers a comprehensive analysis of Oracle's substantial investment in OpenAI, shedding light on the strategic maneuvers and financial commitments driving the future of AI infrastructure. For listeners and enthusiasts, it provides valuable insights into the complexities and scale of modern AI projects.