I’m on location in Las Vegas at Oracle CloudWorld. In this analyst take, I share my thoughts about Larry Ellison’s keynote.
Highlights
00:36 — Larry Ellison’s fantastic keynote was less technical than in previous years, showing not just what Ellison thinks about the technology, but offering use cases. He was asked if Gen AI is the most significant new technology ever. He said it probably is, and we’re going to find out quickly within a few years.
01:02 — Ellison said Gen AI has changed everything about what Oracle does and how it does it. He used an analogy about a baby that could talk and said the supercomputers behind large language models (LLMs) have become so big, complex, and powerful, that they’re able to make this huge leap into speech.
01:49 — He said the SuperCluster that Oracle’s had a lot of years building is going to allow Oracle to have the fastest supercomputer ever on Earth and that it’s a huge part of helping them train these large language models more quickly and at a much lower price than any other developer. He talked about Apex, their no-code programming language.
03:00 — One thing that he said is perhaps the most important thing of all the many things Oracle is working on, is the Oracle public health data intelligence system. This is going to be something that will drive ultimately better patient outcomes and better financial results. In another example, he said, with a lot of genomic data, Oracle was building robots that are building blood lab robots.
03:50— We talked about agriculture. 21st-century agriculture is going to be wildly different. We’re going to move more indoors. Ellison talked about first responders. They deserve to have a network that never goes down, with data immediately at their side to help.
04:44 — My big takeaway from Ellison’s keynote here was he went beyond just talking about Oracle’s internal development of products. I think it’s interesting to note a few weeks ago, Ellison turned 79 years old. He has a vision of the world now and what’s possible here and I think his role in Oracle’s role in helping to shape that is quite powerful. This was one of the best keynotes I’ve ever attended.
