Asianfin--In a recent earnings call, Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison has predicted that the entry barrier for cutting-edge AI models could soar to $100 billion within the next decade.
Ellison's remarks underscore the rising costs and complexities involved in AI model training, which he described as 'astronomical.' The race for computational power, as he noted, is a never-ending endeavor to build better neural networks.
Ellison's comments come at a time when Oracle is investing heavily in AI infrastructure. The company recently announced plans to construct a Zettascale AI supercluster, comprising 131,072 NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 Blackwell GPUs, capable of delivering 2.4 ZettaFLOPS of AI performance. This move positions Oracle ahead of competitors like Elon Musk's xAI, which currently operates with 100,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs.
Oracle shares surged 5.1% on Monday, extending their recent rally and elevating Ellison to the position of the world’s second-richest individual, surpassing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in the rankings.
According to Forbes' real-time billionaires list, Ellison’s net worth has increased by $8.1 billion since Friday's market close, bringing his total to approximately $206 billion. Bezos, who has intermittently held the second spot since 2016, now has a net worth of $203 billion. Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk remains at the top with a net worth of $251 billion.
This upswing in Oracle's stock follows the company’s impressive earnings report last week, which exceeded expectations and led to an optimistic fiscal 2026 revenue forecast. The stock rally initially allowed Ellison to surpass Bezos as the world’s second-richest person on Friday, though Bezos briefly regained the title.
Oracle shares have soared 20% this month. If this momentum continues, it will mark their best performance since October 2022, when the stock jumped 28%, and the second-best month in nearly 20 years since October 2002.
The surge of Oracle’s stock price is partly attributed to its involvement in the artificial intelligence boom. Ellison, who set up Oracle in 1977, discussed on the company’s earnings call how Oracle is developing data centers to meet the growing demand for generative AI.
“We are literally building the smallest, most portable, most affordable cloud data centers all the way up to 200-megawatt data centers, ideal for training very large language models and keeping them up to date,” Ellison explained during the call.
However, the path to maintaining a competitive edge in AI is fraught with challenges. Ellison candidly shared a 'real story' from a recent investor meeting, where he and Musk had to 'beg' NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang for the latest GPUs, reflecting the scarcity of AI computational resources, a bottleneck that many companies are grappling with.
Oracle's ambitious AI plans also extend to energy infrastructure. The company has secured permits to build three modular nuclear reactors to power its data centers. While this move promises to meet Oracle's substantial energy needs, the deployment of nuclear reactors is a long-term project that could take years to complete.
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