LAS VEGAS — Oracle co-chief executive Mike Sicilia on Tuesday cast artificial intelligence as the defining force reshaping both business and technology, pledging that Oracle would be the company to deliver “trusted AI” for enterprises that need power, privacy and reliability more than hype.
Speaking to thousands of customers and partners at Oracle AI World in Las Vegas, the company’s newly rebranded flagship event formerly known as CloudWorld, Sicilia said the technology industry had reached a “once-in-a-generation moment” where AI would redefine how companies operate, not just what tools they use.
“AI changes everything,” Sicilia told the crowd. “It changes how you serve your customers, how you find the best talent, how you save money and how you innovate. Together we are defining the era of AI.”
For Oracle, a company long associated with databases and back-office software, the message was as much about reinvention as leadership. Sicilia positioned Oracle’s data heritage, the Oracle Database, as the foundation for its future.
He described it as “AI-native”, capable of managing both structured and unstructured data while securely powering generative AI models.
“Our AI Data Platform combines your enterprise data with the best models in the world,” he said. “It lets you use your private data with AI without sacrificing trust or security.”
The tech major’s newly launched AI Data Platform combines its cloud infrastructure, autonomous database and AI services to help firms use existing data for AI-driven applications.
Cloud laggard to AI front-runner
Sicilia’s remarks also reflected a wider corporate pivot. Oracle, which was late to embrace cloud computing while Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Google seized early dominance, is now determined to move faster in the AI era.
The company is investing heavily to position itself near the front of the artificial intelligence race.
The Austin-headquartered firm has signed a string of multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure deals with firms such as NVIDIA, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI, partnerships that secure enormous cloud capacity for training large language models and mark some of the biggest commercial AI contracts to date.
Sicilia presented these as part of a strategy to show Oracle can match the scale and reliability required for global enterprise AI deployment.
The top executive also described how Oracle is embedding AI across its own operations. He said 80% of the company’s employees report that AI tools have already improved their work quality. “From finance teams that close books faster to HR departments that fill roles more efficiently,” he said.
In finance, he said, automation tools are saving “several days per quarter” while AI-assisted sales platforms are improving forecasts and win rates. In customer support, automated ticket handling has cut response times by more than half.
But Sicilia emphasised that AI is not just about statistics. “It is about solving entire problems and doing things in a much better way,” he said. “It is about giving employees time for the work that is most meaningful.”
Infrastructure and trust
At the heart of tech giant’s AI strategy is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), its platform for training and deploying AI models. Sicilia described OCI as “the AI infrastructure leader”, claiming it is trusted to train and serve more models “than any other hyperscaler“.
The company says its strengths lie in data security, cost efficiency and speed, advantages it hopes will attract enterprises that have been cautious about handing sensitive workloads to public cloud providers.
While many businesses remain in early experimental phases with AI, with research such as The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 report from MIT estimating that only a small fraction of corporate AI projects progress beyond pilot stages, Oracle is betting that its blend of data management, security and integration tools will help customers scale faster.
A rebranded event, a familiar race
The rebranding of CloudWorld to AI World also signalled Oracle’s ambition to redefine itself from a legacy software vendor into a major player in the new AI economy.
Throughout the keynote, executives from sectors including energy, travel, hospitality and biotech described how Oracle’s AI is being used to predict demand, personalise services and streamline operations.
While Oracle’s overall cloud market share still trails its larger competitors, Sicilia said the company’s decades-long reputation for handling mission-critical data gives it a unique position in the AI era.
“Trusted AI,” he said, “is not a slogan. It is the only way forward.”
