Larry Ellison, the co-founder and CTO of Oracle, recently told a rather funny but quite telling story about a dinner he had with Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang at Nobu in Palo Alto. In one of the recent earnings calls, Ellison explained how he and Musk were pleading with Huang to provide them with more GPUs, which are critical to AI efforts. . “Please take our money. We need you to take more of our money,” Ellison recalled, humorously summarising their desperate plea for Nvidia’s coveted chips.
The dinner reveals the competition between the tech companies for GPUs, which is essential in training sophisticated models of artificial intelligence. Ellison said that the result of their request was good: “It went okay. I mean, it worked,” meaning that they managed to get more GPUs from Nvidia.
By September 2024, Ellison’s net worth is USD 206 billion, and Oracle is ready to compete in the AI and cloud sectors. The company has recently posted its revenue up by 7% to USD 13.3 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2025, which is a clear indication of its plans to broaden the GPU capacity.
Currently, Nvidia controls over 80% of the AI chip market, and therefore, its GPUs are in high demand in companies such as Tesla and Oracle. Musk’s ventures also depend on Nvidia technology for training neural networks concerning self-driving cars.
Ellison pointed out that the battle for AI dominance is like the Formula One race, and there is likely to be massive spending in the next few years. He estimated that constructing new generation AI systems could reach USD 100 billion, and this would increase the need for Nvidia’s GPU as organisations rush to meet the new requirements in this fast-growing field.