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AI Inferencing Will Outpace AI Training -- Oracle CTOAI Inferencing Will Outpace AI Training -- Oracle CTOAI Inferencing Will Outpace AI Training -- Oracle CTO

Larry Ellison was bullish about the potential for AI inferencing to shape enterprise operations during Oracle's fiscal Q1 2026 earnings call this week.

Kelsey Ziser , Senior Editor, InformationWeek

September 11, 2025

4 Min Read
Oracle company headquarters
(Source: GK Images/Alamy)

The future of enterprise AI is evolving from training large language models using massive data sets to utilizing AI inferencing, the strategic deployment of pretrained models to deliver business value in real time.

So pronounced Oracle co-founder, chairman and CTO Larry Ellison at an earnings call this week that showcased the software company's pivotal transformation from legacy software and database company to a major cloud and AI infrastructure provider. Ellison's belief in the dominance of AI inferencing over AI training projects was backed by the company's record-breaking 455ドル billion in remaining performance obligations (RPOs), or backlog of contracts.

Total revenue for fiscal Q1 2026 was 14ドル.9 billion, up 12% from the same quarter a year ago. While slightly below analyst predictions, the revenue miss did not appear to dampen investor enthusiasm, with Oracle stock up 31% in after-hours trading.

For CIO clients of Oracle, the results provided ample proof of the vendor's long-term commitment to strategic AI, plus the buy-in from other Oracle customers, as evidenced by the massive RPOs. In addition, Oracle provided insight into how the company plans to deliver AI inferencing tools in a secure way and on how to use generative AI (GenAI) tools to improve productivity across enterprise operations while ensuring corporate data privacy -- a front-of-mind issue for CIOs.

Related:From Data to Doing: Agentic AI Will Revolutionize the Enterprise

"Oracle is clearly participating in the AI gold rush and also benefitting indirectly by the large AI vendors spreading around their investments across all the major cloud platforms. Having a seat at this table is critical for Oracle's future," Torsten Volk, principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, told InformationWeek.

Why AI Inferencing Will Automate Enterprise Operations

Ellison explained that AI inferencing will be used to run robotic factories, biomolecular simulations for drug design, laboratory automation, placing bets in financial markets and more. In addition, he forecasts that AI inferencing will be used to automate processes in finance, legal and sales.

"AI is going to write -- that is, generate the computer programs called AI agents that will automate your sales and marketing processes," Ellison said.

During AI training, an AI model is taught to identify patterns within a data set. In the AI inference phase, "the trained model applies these learned patterns to create predictions, generate content or make decisions when it encounters new, previously unseen data," according to TechTarget .

Related:OpenAI's Instant Checkout Signals Potential Risks and Rewards for CIOs

A recent Gartner survey revealed that 95% of CIOs believe that generative AI (GenAI) has significant potential to improve their organizations in the form of higher productivity, better customer experience and support for their digital transformations.

"CIOs are increasingly in charge of GenAI initiatives, with 48% of CIOs responding to the survey indicating that they are the main executives responsible for these initiatives," according to a recent LinkedIn article by Louis Columbus , contributor to Data Center Knowledge.

Ellison said the company "is aggressively pursuing" both the AI training and inferencing markets and explained that Oracle is well-positioned to do so as a "custodian of high-value private enterprise data." He added that the company has introduced a new AI database and the ability to understand enterprise customer data via AI models, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Grok and Llama, which are all available in the Oracle Cloud. For example, customers could access Oracle's AI database, link to the LLM of their choosing and securely ask questions such as how tariffs might affect company revenue.

Closer Look at Oracle RPOs, Cloud Outlook

Taking a closer look at Oracle's Q1 earnings , the company's remaining performance obligations (RPOs) -- which represent unearned revenue from current customer contracts -- were up a whopping 359% year-over-year (YoY) in both USD and constant currency to 455ドル billion. The company's shares rose significantly on Wednesday, up 33%.

Related:4 Myths About Agentic AI that CIOs Should Ignore

"Oracle's Q1 earnings revealed strong growth across multiple fronts, but the major takeaway is the massive uptick in their RPO contract backlog," Scott Sinclair, practice director for ESG, told InformationWeek. "With so much focus on the infrastructure opportunity with AI, the importance of data can often be underestimated. Oracle's position as a leader in database technology provides them incredible strength as enterprises continue to scale their AI operations."

Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle, said the high RPO contract backlog was a result of attaining four multi-billion-dollar contracts across three different customers during Q1. Catz said she anticipates the signing of several more multi-billion-dollar contracts in the next few months, which would bring the company's RPO to more than half-a-trillion dollars.

The company's cloud business revenue rose 28% in USD, and was up 27% in constant currency to 7ドル.2 billion during Q1. However, the software unit's revenue declined 1% in USD, and 2% in constant currency to 5ドル.7 billion.

"MultiCloud database revenue from Amazon, Google and Microsoft grew at the incredible rate of 1,529% in Q1," Ellison said.

He added that he anticipates MultiCloud revenue to continue to grow significantly over the next few years "as we deliver another 37 data centers to our three hyperscaler partners, for a total of 71."

"Eventually, AI will change everything," said Ellison during the earnings call. "Right now, AI is fundamentally transforming Oracle and the rest of the computer industry, though not everyone fully grasps the extent of the tsunami that is approaching."

About the Author

Senior Editor, InformationWeek

Kelsey is a senior editor at InformationWeek, covering enterprise networking and IT.

Prior to InformationWeek, Kelsey spent nine years at InformationWeek's sister publication Light Reading covering smartphones, devices, AI, satellite connectivity, enterprise networking and more.

Kelsey's interest in the telecom world started with a PR position at Connect2 Communications, which led to a communications role at the FREEDM Systems Center, a smart grid research lab at N.C. State University. There, she orchestrated their webinar program across college campuses and covered research projects such as the center's smart solid-state transformer.

Kelsey enjoys reading four (or 12) books at once, watching movies about space travel, crafting and (hoarding) houseplants.

Kelsey is based in Raleigh, N.C.

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