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After betting big on AI and taking Oracle to a market cap of almost $1 trillion, Safra Catz is stepping down to make way for two Oracle heavyweights: Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia. Meanwhile, Catz has been as appointed as Executive Vice Chair of the Oracle Board of Directors.
“Safra led Oracle as we became a hyperscale cloud powerhouse,” said Larry Ellison, Oracle’s Chairman. He then added: “In her role as Vice Chair, Safra and I will be able to continue our 26-year partnership – helping to guide Oracle’s direction, growth and success.”
The creation of a co-CEO position is always interesting, and Magouyrk and Sicilia released a joint statement on how it would work. “We are excited to lead Oracle into the AI era, where technological innovation leads to extraordinary business opportunity and hyper-growth,” they said.
“Our combined strengths in AI, cloud infrastructure, horizontal applications and industry applications, will enable Oracle to deliver the latest AI capabilities to our customers.”
In a farewell statement, Safra Catz said: “Today, Oracle is recognized as the cloud of choice for both AI training and inferencing. I’m very proud of that.”
She added: “Oracle’s technology and business have never been stronger. And our breathtaking growth rate points to an even more prosperous future. At this time of strength is the right moment to pass the CEO role to the next generation of capable executives. Congratulations Clay and Mike.”
So, who are the new CEOs of Oracle? “Clay’s years of experience leading Oracle’s large, fast-growing Cloud Infrastructure business has demonstrated his readiness for a CEO role,” said Ellison in summary.
Magouyrk was previously President or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, having joined from AWS in 2014. He was particularly crucial in the development of OCI Gen2, which an Oracle statement claimed “powers both hyperscale public cloud datacenters and gigawatt-scale AI Training datacenters”.
Then we come to Mike Sicilia, who was formerly President of Oracle Industries. “Mike has spent the last several years modernising Oracle’s Industry applications businesses – including Oracle Health- by completely rebuilding those applications using the latest AI technologies,” said Ellison.
He joined Oracle through its acquisition of Primavera Systems way back in 2008. Back to the statement for more: “Mike’s engineering teams pioneered the use of intent-based application generation to replace traditional coding for building Oracle applications.
“His teams also added very sophisticated sets of AI Agents to [Oracle’s] industry application suites – including healthcare, banking, communications, utilities, hospitality and retail.”
So, on paper Oracle has two CEOs who specialise in complementary sectors. “They are both proven leaders,” said Ellison, “and I am looking forward to spending the coming years working side-by-side with them. Oracle’s future is bright.”
