Rumor mill: The potential accord with Meta highlights how intensely companies are competing to lock in the resources needed for AI development. As workloads for advanced models increase in complexity and cost, cloud providers capable of delivering the necessary scale have become pivotal in determining which firms can stay competitive in the race to commercialize AI technologies.
Oracle is negotiating a multiyear agreement with Meta that could be valued at roughly $20 billion, people familiar with the matter have told Bloomberg. The arrangement would make Oracle a key provider of computing power for Meta's artificial intelligence operations.
The agreement, which has not yet been finalized, would involve Oracle supplying large-scale computing capacity to support the training and deployment of Meta's AI models. The talks remain private and details of the financial commitment could still change, the people said. If completed, the deal would add to Oracle's recent streak of substantial bookings from companies looking to secure advanced AI infrastructure.
The discussions come on the heels of Oracle reporting a surge in cloud contracts earlier this month, a wave that boosted the company's shares to record levels. That growth has been tied closely to AI-driven demand for compute power, a segment where Oracle has positioned itself alongside – and now increasingly against – entrenched leaders Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
Until recently, Oracle was known primarily for enterprise database software, but its cloud division has become central to technology companies investing heavily in generative AI.
Meta is already a customer of Oracle, which also provides infrastructure to the likes of Elon Musk's xAI. The potential $20 billion commitment would extend that relationship at a time when the social media company has been expanding investments into large-scale AI models to power both its consumer platforms and research efforts. Meta declined to comment on the negotiations, while Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.
The deal talks also add to mounting interest among investors in the concentration of Oracle's newest business lines. Analysts have raised questions over how much of the company's cloud bookings rely on single clients, pointing to a separate landmark agreement inked earlier this year with OpenAI. That $300 billion deal, estimated to provide 4.5 gigawatts of computing power to the ChatGPT-maker, has been described as one of the largest cloud infrastructure contracts to date.
Last week, Oracle said it had secured four additional multibillion-dollar deals and projected that its cloud unit's revenue would surpass $500 billion. The company disclosed that revenue from cross-cloud service partnerships with Amazon, Microsoft and Google rose more than sixteenfold in its most recent quarter.
Oracle could hit again: Meta talks could lead to $20 billion AI cloud deal
