Oracle doubles down on artificial intelligence investments in India

Texas-based technology major Oracle is doubling down on investments in artificial intelligence (AI) in India as it helps enterprises scale AI and generative AI (GenAI).

“Oracle brings AI to the enterprise at every layer of the stack, from software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications (apps), AI services, data, and infrastructure,” said Chris Chelliah, senior vice-president (V-P), technology and customer strategy, Oracle Japan and Asia Pacific, on the sidelines of the Oracle Data & AI Forum in Bengaluru on Thursday.

Oracle Database 23ai, the latest release of Oracle’s converged database, is in line with the company’s sharp focus on AI. The latest release includes Oracle AI Vector Search and more than 300 additional major features focused on simplifying the use of AI with data, accelerating app development, and running mission-critical workloads.

“The new AI Vector Search capabilities enable customers to securely combine search for documents, images, and other unstructured data with search on private business data, without moving or duplicating it. Oracle Database 23ai brings AI algorithms to where the data lives, instead of having to move the data to where the AI algorithm lives. This allows AI to run in real-time in Oracle databases, greatly improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and security of AI,” Oracle said in a statement.

Oracle Database 23ai is available in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure on Oracle Exadata Database Service, Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer, and Oracle Base Database Service, as well as on Oracle Database@Azure.

“Oracle Database 23ai is a game changer for enterprises worldwide, and because of the importance of the breakthrough AI technology in this release, we are renaming it to Oracle Database 23ai,” said Juan Loaiza, executive V-P, mission-critical database technologies, Oracle.

Oracle’s Q3 Cloud revenue (infrastructure-as-a-service and SaaS) stood at $5.1 billion, up 24 per cent in constant currency. In comparison, its total revenue grew 7 per cent in constant currency to $13.3 billion.

Oracle’s financial year ends on May 31.

As part of its strategy to expand AI globally, Oracle is estimated to invest about $10 billion in data centre expansion. It currently operates 68 customer-facing Cloud regions, two of which became operational this year.

Oracle is planning to expand capacity at 66 existing data centres to accommodate the exponentially expanding demand for AI workloads and enterprise migrations, Oracle’s management said in a post-earnings call.