Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has revealed plans to design a data centre powered by three small nuclear reactors, harnessing the surge in artificial intelligence (AI) to support the ambitious project. Ellison said the reactors would generate over a Gigawatt of energy — sufficient to power 800,000 homes annually.
“We found the location and the power place,” he said, noting that permits were already secured for the reactors.
The proposal does face legal barriers in Australia, where nuclear power remains banned. However, the Coalition has proposed building seven nuclear power plants across the country, all publicly funded.
Conversely, Oracle’s initiative involves private funding, though concerns remain regarding the financial feasibility given the US$100 billion cost of the AI-enhanced data centre.
International precedents do exist. Westinghouse inked a deal last year with UK-based Community Nuclear Power Limited for four small modular reactors costing US$1 billion each, which are expected to be operational within a decade.
Oracle, meanwhile, is integrating AI throughout its operations, offering enhanced enterprise software, AI-powered infrastructure, and fine-tuned data management.
Senior Vice President Mahesh Thiagarajan emphasised Oracle’s goal to deploy thousands of localised data centres, compared to competitors’ hundreds. AI is also being utilised for project risk analysis, with models trained on past successes and failures to improve future predictions.
“That’s the differentiated vision that we are going after,” Thiagaraja said. “We are welcoming every single enterprise out there to actually deploy our Oracle data centres next to wherever they want it. We have the capability now.”
Oracle’s AI capabilities extend into healthcare, with Australian clients such as the Royal Flying Doctor Service already implementing AI-driven medical records systems that generate personalised aftercare recommendations and drug treatment plans.
Generative AI was also being added to Oracle’s small business oriented product, NetSuite (NYSE:N), which the company acquired in 2016.
Co-founder and CEO of NetSuite (NYSE:N) Evan Goldberg gave the example of Generative AI automatically creating the sales descriptions of items in an online store or being promoted in an email campaign.
“We’ve pre-configured NetSuite to know what you might want to include, the price and some of the features … so you don’t have to pull that all together. It just does that automatically.”
“This year we’re giving customers the ability to customise how it operates on a field-by-field basis,” Goldberg said.