Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is a global technology company that provides integrated cloud applications, platform services, database software, and engineered systems for enterprises. Oracle develops and markets database software, cloud infrastructure, enterprise software, and related hardware systems.
Founding Story
Founded in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in Santa Clara, California by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates with just $2,000 in initial funding. Ellison was inspired by Edgar F. Codd's 1970 paper on relational database management systems. The founders had previously worked together at Ampex on a database project for the CIA code-named 'Oracle.' They received permission to use this name for their commercial product. The company's first customer was the CIA. The founders reportedly flipped a coin to decide between pursuing the CIA project and developing a compiler for the PDP-4.
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Leadership
Founders
Larry Ellison
Born August 17, 1944. Attended University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (pre-med, named science student of year) and University of Chicago (studied physics and mathematics, learned computer design). Worked as computer programmer at Amdahl Corporation and Ampex Corporation, where he worked on a CIA database project code-named Oracle. Co-founded Oracle in 1977 with $1,200 of the initial $2,000 investment. Served as CEO from 1977-2014, currently Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer.
Bob Miner
Born December 23, 1941. BS in mathematics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1963). Worked at Ampex where he was Larry Ellison's supervisor. Co-founded Oracle in 1977 as lead engineer. Led product design and development for Oracle RDBMS from 1977-1992. Programmed majority of Oracle Version 3 himself. Served on Oracle's board until October 1993. Passed away November 11, 1994.
Ed Oates
Born 1946. BA in mathematics from San Jose State University (1968). Worked at Singer, US Army Personnel Information Systems Command (PERSINSCOM), Ampex, and Memorex before co-founding Oracle in 1977. Remained with company until 1996.
Executive Team
Lawrence J. Ellison
Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer
Co-founder of Oracle. Born 1944, studied at University of Illinois and University of Chicago. Worked at Ampex before founding Oracle in 1977. Served as CEO from 1977-2014. Previously served as director of Apple (1997-2002) and Tesla (2018-2022).
Safra A. Catz
Executive Vice Chair of the Board of Directors
Previously CEO of Oracle. Held various positions at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette including Managing Director in Investment Banking. Joined Oracle and served in multiple roles including President, CFO, EVP, and SVP. Lecturer at Stanford GSB. Previously served on boards of HSBC Holdings and The Walt Disney Company.
Business Model
Revenue Model
Multi-model approach including: 1) Cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) through subscription-based pricing for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Autonomous Database, Fusion Applications, and NetSuite; 2) Software licenses and license support for perpetual database and application licenses with ongoing maintenance fees; 3) Hardware systems sales including Exadata and SPARC servers; 4) Professional services including consulting, implementation, support, and training. Cloud revenues accounted for 43% of total revenues in fiscal 2025.
Target Markets
- Enterprise organizations and large corporations
- Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) via NetSuite
- Healthcare providers and health information systems
- Financial services including banks, insurance, and capital markets
- Retail and consumer goods companies
- Manufacturing and industrial organizations
- Enterprise database management and transaction processing
- Cloud migration for Oracle Exadata workloads to multicloud environments
- Building and managing microservices and modern cloud applications
- Generative AI adoption and machine learning model training
- End-to-end business process automation through application integration
- Centralized data management and business intelligence
- Central Intelligence Agency
- United States Department of Defense
- TikTok
- AT&T
History & Milestones
Finalized deal to own 15% of TikTok's U.S. operations; announced $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure venture with OpenAI, SoftBank, and MGX
Appointed Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as co-CEOs; Safra Catz appointed Executive Vice Chair of the Board
Launched Oracle AI Factory and announced partnership with AMD for 50,000 GPU AI supercluster
Stephen Rusckowski appointed to Board of Directors
Announced plans to move world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee; launched Oracle Database@AWS, Oracle Database@Azure, and Oracle Database@Google Cloud partnerships
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