Oracle has named Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as joint chief executives, indicating a shift as the company intensifies its focus on artificial intelligence and cloud services. Magouyrk leads cloud infrastructure, while Sicilia oversees industry-specific applications. Safra Catz, the current CEO, will become executive vice chair of the board.
Larry Ellison remains as chairman and chief technology officer. He has also been active beyond Oracle, backing the recent merger of Skydance Media with Paramount Global, which is now exploring an acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Oracle has capitalised on the AI boom through its cloud infrastructure and exclusive access to Nvidia’s GPUs, competing against Microsoft, Amazon and Google. Magouyrk developed the company’s Gen2 cloud platform, and Sicilia managed tailored business applications.
“A few years ago, Clay and Mike committed Oracle’s Infrastructure and Applications businesses to AI—it’s paying off,” Ellison said.
Following the announcement, Oracle’s shares rose 3%, continuing a strong year with an 85% gain to date.
The company reported remaining performance obligations of $455 billion, up 359% year-on-year, reflecting growing contracted revenues.
“At this time of strength is the right moment to pass the CEO role to the next generation of capable executives,” Catz stated.
Oracle transitioned from a database software vendor to a cloud leader in response to Amazon’s dominance, launching its Gen2 platform in 2018. The company gained major clients like TikTok and Zoom, and accelerated growth after OpenAI’s ChatGPT debut in 2022, securing a $300 billion contract with OpenAI starting in 2027.
Oracle will manage TikTok’s U.S. data privacy as part of an investor group with Silver Lake, amid regulatory pressures requiring ByteDance to divest its American operations.
In other moves, Mark Hura has been promoted to president of global field operations, and Doug Kehring named principal financial officer.