Oracle will rent out Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) in its cloud from 2027. That makes it the first hyperscale cloud outside Google to offer the chips. It is also putting OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Codex inside its business software. Oracle announced both deals on Tuesday, 27 October, at Oracle AI World in Las Vegas. New hardware from Nvidia, Intel, AMD, SambaNova and Positron came with them.
Oracle set out the TPU deal and the OpenAI products in press releases. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) president Mahesh Thiagarajan gave more detail to Seema Mody of CNBC. OCI senior vice president Karan Batta spoke to Georgia Butler of DatacenterDynamics.
Google’s chips in a rival cloud
Oracle will host the TPUs in its own data centres and supply the power, cooling and networking. The chips arrive in calendar year 2027, and capacity will grow over several years. Google’s eighth generation comes in two versions. TPU 8t is for training, and TPU 8i is for inference, the work of running a finished model. Google says the 8t delivers nearly three times the compute per pod of the previous generation.
“Different AI workloads have different compute needs,” Thiagarajan said in the announcement.
Oracle declined to say how many TPUs it will start with. Batta told DatacenterDynamics the deal is a “multi-year, multi-gigawatt partnership”. He said Oracle will get each new TPU on the day Google launches it.
“What I can tell you is that this is not an experiment,” Batta said.
Oracle may not be first in practice. Google is building a TPU cloud called Crux AI with Blackstone, DatacenterDynamics noted. Neocloud Fluidstack is also deploying TPUs for Anthropic. On Tuesday, The Information also reported that OpenAI plans to buy Google’s TPUs.
More chips, from almost everyone
The TPUs join a long list. Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 systems and Vera CPUs are now generally available on OCI. Oracle plans to scale its Vera Rubin clusters to several gigawatts. Smaller eight-GPU HGX Rubin NVL8 servers will follow, with no date given. Nvidia put Vera Rubin into production in July.
Oracle also signed a multi-year deal with Intel for Xeon chips. It covers planned servers built on Diamond Rapids, Intel’s next server processor. AMD-based E7 instances are close to launch, and SambaNova’s SN50 chip is coming without a timeline, DatacenterDynamics reported. Positron’s Atlas inference servers are available now. Oracle also signed up Cerebras for 2027.
OpenAI’s own Jalapeño chip will run on OCI too, CNBC reported. Thiagarajan told CNBC this is not a move away from Nvidia, whose chips he called “the best, most fungible”. Chips are still scarce, he said, so customers gain from having several to choose from.
OpenAI moves into Oracle’s software
The OpenAI deal brings four products. Oracle AI Workspace gives staff ChatGPT plugins for Oracle’s Fusion apps, NetSuite and its database. They can find data and complete approved tasks. Oracle says it is “coming soon”. AI Security Mesh uses OpenAI’s cyber models to find and test weaknesses in a company’s systems. The customer sets the limits, and Oracle runs the service.
App Composer lets employees build apps with Codex without writing code, while Oracle runs them on OCI. A limited group of customers can use it now. A small-business bundle offers $12,000 a year in OCI credits for up to three years, plus ChatGPT Business and NetSuite tools. Only independent, privately held US companies qualify.
“More businesses are choosing OpenAI as we make it easier to put AI to work through the tools and systems they already use,” OpenAI president Greg Brockman said in the release.
Snowflake’s data cloud also becomes a native OCI service, billed by Oracle. A day earlier, Oracle launched AI agents for its Fusion apps that can plan and carry out approved work. Co-CEO Mike Sicilia said on stage that AI would give people “more time to be human”, as Craig Hale reported for TechRadar.
The money question
Some observers remain unconvinced. Brandon Vigliarolo wrote for The Register that much of the news amounts to “circular spending” among the biggest AI players, while most businesses still wait for returns.
Oracle shares rose nearly 5% on Tuesday, according to CNBC. They are still down more than 30% this year, as investors worry about how Oracle will pay for its data centres. Its Project Jupiter site in New Mexico faces local opposition and an air-quality hearing on 7 December, though Oracle says it is on schedule. Investors now want Oracle to back up its 2030 revenue targets at its coming investor day.