Oracle Appoints Co-CEOs to Replace Longtime Leader Safra Catz
Oracle has appointed not just one, but two new CEOs to help the software giant maintain momentum as it rides the A.I. revolution to unprecedented highs. The top executive role, currently filled by Safra Catz, will be jointly taken up by insiders Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia going forward, announced Oracle today (Sep. 22). The two leaders will be charged with guiding Oracle at a pivotal time for the tech player as it leans heavily into providing the cloud infrastructure required to power A.I. It’s already benefitted handsomely from a newfound demand for data centers, with the A.I. boom lifting its shares by nearly 95 percent this year, propelling its founder Larry Ellison’s net worth to new heights and giving rise to some of the largest cloud contracts in history. Both of Oracle’s new leaders have the credentials to back up the company’s A.I. shift. Magouyrk, head of Oracle’s cloud infrastructure team, has overseen the rollout of platforms powering A.I. data centers, while Sicilia formerly led Oracle’s applications business and steered teams integrating industry-specific A.I. agents across areas like healthcare, banking and communications.
“A few years ago, Clay and Mike committed Oracle’s Infrastructure and Application businesses to A.I.—it’s paying off,” said Ellison, who serves as Oracle’s chairman and chief technology officer, in a statement. “They are both proven leaders, and I am looking forward to spending the coming years working side-by-side with them.” While co-CEOs remain unusual in Silicon Valley, this isn’t the first time Oracle has dabbled with a joint leadership structure. After Ellison stepped down as CEO in 2014, Catz was appointed to the role alongside Mark Hurd and remained on as the sole chief executive after Hurd’s passing in 2019.
Catz, who will also be passing on her principal financial officer position to Doug Kehring, is staying on at Oracle as executive vice chair of its board of directors. Her 11-year tenure as the software company’s CEO was most recently marked by a surge across its cloud business, which generated some $3.3 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue during the July-August quarter to represent a 55 percent year-over-year increase. That figure will rise to a total of $18 billion for the 2026 fiscal year, according to Oracle’s forecasts, and increase to $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion and $144 billion over the following four years.
Behind Oracle’s ballooning fortunes is an unrelenting demand from A.I. developers to secure computing capacity. Over the most recent quarter, Oracle signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers and reported that its performance obligations from existing contracts surged to $455 billion—up 359 percent compared to the prior year. One of its most significant deals to date includes a recently announced agreement to provide OpenAI with $300 billion worth of computing power over the next five years as part of the ChatGPT-maker’s Stargate venture.
Earlier this month, Oracle’s A.I. dominance culminated in a share gain that sent its stock flying in the company’s biggest one-day percentage jump since 1992 and briefly made Ellison the world’s wealthiest person in the world. “Oracle’s technology and business have never been stronger,” said Catz in a statement, adding that the company’s “breathtaking growth rate points to an even more prosperous future.”
Beyond Oracle’s A.I. ambitions, the tech company is also set to play a role in a looming deal that will see the Chinese-owned TikTok sell its U.S. arm to a consortium of American investors. Under an arrangement overseen by the Trump administration, Oracle will be responsible for recreating TikTok’s algorithm by retraining a new U.S. version, said White House officials today.