Larry Ellison and Elon Musk “begged” Nvidia’s CEO for more GPUs

At a meeting with analysts last week, billionaire Oracle co-founder and chief technology officer Larry Ellison told the audience that he and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, took Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to dinner at Nobu Palo Alto and “begged” Huang to give it to them. multiple GPUs.

“I would describe the dinner as Oracle – Elon and I begged Jensen for the GPU,” Ellison recalled. “Please take our money. Please take our money. By the way, I had dinner. No, no, take more. We need you to take more money, please.”

The result was clearly positive, Ellison said. “It went well. I mean, it worked.”

Ellison, whose famous fortune is estimated at $206 billion, is a prominent figure in the technology industry and is executive chairman of enterprise software company Oracle. He is known for anticipating significant technological changes, including precisely positioning the $475 billion tech giant to reap the benefits of the Internet in its infancy. He further strengthened the company by changing it to capitalize on the growing need for cloud-based enterprise infrastructure. The company has maintained a strong relationship with Nvidia, which controls more than 80 percent of the AI ​​chip market and is the primary choice for companies working on AI.

At last week’s meeting, Ellison said the competitive landscape won’t hinder Oracle’s growth. The easiest way to look at it, Ellison replied, is the phrase “the race goes on.” He compared the current competition in AI to a Formula 1 race.

“You have three people on the podium, but there’s really only one winner,” Ellison said. “Somebody’s going to be better at it than anybody else, and more people are trying, and there’s a race.”

For its part, Oracle is making huge investments in GPU technology, especially for AI applications. The tech giant announced its first-quarter results for fiscal 2025 this month, and disclosed revenue rose 7% to $13.3 billion year over year. Profits were $2.9 billion. Oracle also revealed that it has 162 cloud data centers in operation or under construction worldwide, and the largest of its data centers is 800 megawatts and will house “acres of Nvidia GPU clusters” used for training large-scale AI models. In the first quarter, Oracle signed another 42 cloud GPU contracts, worth a total of $3 billion.

Similarly, Tesla, where Musk is CEO, relies on Nvidia GPUs to power the supercomputers that train its neural networks for autonomous and assisted driving technology.

According to Ellison, being the first to build the world’s most capable neural network “is a big deal.” With a desire to be at the forefront, many AI executives are begging Huang for GPUs and building data centers, he said.

“Does anyone know how much it costs to build a frontier model over the next three years?” Ellison was referring to the most advanced state-of-the-art AI systems.

“A hundred billion,” Ellison said. “That’ll get you into the game.”

“Not a lot of people, not a lot of companies, and not a lot of countries will participate.”

An Nvidia spokesman declined to comment, and Tesla did not immediately respond wealthhis request.

Recommended newsletter
Data sheet: Stay on top of the tech business with close analysis of the industry’s biggest names.
Register here.