50 Fun Facts About Oracle Corporation

To which city did Oracle move its world headquarters from Redwood Shores in 2020?

Oracle announced the move from Redwood Shores to Austin in December 2020, after opening an East Riverside office there in 2018.

In which year was Oracle co-founded in Santa Clara, California?

Bob Miner, Ed Oates and Larry Ellison started the company on June 16, 1977.

Under what name was Oracle originally founded?

It became Relational Software, Inc in 1979 and Oracle Systems Corporation in 1983 to match its flagship database.

Which US government agency was Oracle's first customer?

The company's name came from the codename of a 1977 database project for the agency, and Oracle got permission to reuse it.

The three founders decided Larry Ellison was the worst programmer, so he took which role?

Ellison understood both customers and the technology and used demo database tables to show customers the power of SQL.

Whose 1970 paper on relational databases inspired Oracle's founders?

The paper was titled "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks."

In which year did Oracle hold its initial public offering?

The IPO came on March 12, 1986, three years after a newsletter called Oracle the most comprehensive database offering it had seen.

Oracle moved its world headquarters in 1989 to which California neighbourhood?

The Redwood City campus was not finished until 1995 and remained the headquarters until 2020.

In 2013 Oracle moved its listing from Nasdaq to which market?

At the time it was the largest-ever US market transfer.

In April 2024 Oracle announced a future headquarters move to which city?

The planned Tennessee complex was billed as Oracle's largest office hub, with 8,500 jobs, though no timeframe was given.

Cerner, bought by Oracle in 2022, worked in which field?

The deal closed in 2022 and was Oracle's largest acquisition ever.

Where was Cerner headquartered?

The company now trades as Oracle Health and Oracle Life Sciences.

In which year did Oracle complete its acquisition of Sun Microsystems?

The deal was worth more than $7 billion and turned Oracle into a hardware maker as well as a software company.

Which open-source database did Oracle gain control of through the Sun deal?

Sun had bought the database in 2008, and the European Commission delayed the deal over it before approving unconditionally.

Which company did Oracle sue over Java packages used in Android?

The two companies failed to agree a licence, so the defendant built its own platform containing 37 copied Java packages.

Which investment firm joined Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank in the Stargate venture?

The Abu Dhabi firm later took a stake in TikTok's US operations alongside Oracle and Silver Lake.

Who became Oracle's co-CEOs in September 2025?

Magouyrk had run cloud infrastructure and Sicilia the industries group.

For how many years was Safra Catz Oracle's CEO before stepping aside in 2025?

She moved to a new role as executive vice chair after holding the top job since 2014.

Which one-word slogan did Oracle use for its database in 2002?

Within two weeks security researchers including David Litchfield demonstrated a suite of successful attacks against Oracle products.

What caused Oracle to lay off about 10% of its workforce in 1990?

Salespeople had booked future licence sales in the current quarter to boost bonuses, and Oracle had to restate earnings twice.

Oracle's 1990s rescue investment came from a Japanese company in which industry?

Ken Jacobs called it a near death experience; new executives Jeff Henley and Raymond J. Lane were brought in to recover.

Bob MacDonald of which rival database company called Oracle "the evil empire"?

Oracle's own Mike Humphries described his company as the Klingons of the Bay Area.

Which rival database CEO ended up in jail after his obsessive war with Larry Ellison?

A 2005 book chronicled the three-year battle, which made front-page news in Silicon Valley.

Which database vendor was Oracle's first major competitor?

Oracle's strategy was to focus on one opponent at a time, which later caused it to neglect Sybase as a threat.

Oracle's 2007 lawsuit against SAP centred on which SAP subsidiary?

The subsidiary was accused of using former Oracle customers' accounts to download patches and support documents.

How much did a 2010 jury order SAP to pay Oracle for copyright infringement?

A judge later called the award grossly excessive and the sides settled on a $306 million judgment in 2012.

In the 2000 Trashgate affair, whose janitors were offered $1,200 by Oracle's sleuths?

The reported offer was $1,200 to look through trash belonging to a rival; Larry Ellison called the snooping a public service.

Which state's health-exchange website, built by Oracle, failed at its 2013 launch?

Registrations had to be taken on paper, both sides sued each other in 2014, and a settlement worth over $100 million followed in 2016.

Oracle settled a class action over online tracking in 2024 for how much?

The suit filed by Lieff Cabraser alleged surveillance of the general population via their digital existence.

HP's 2011 lawsuit claimed Oracle broke a promise to support which microprocessor?

HP was awarded $3 billion in damages in 2016 and the decision stood despite Oracle's appeal plans.

Oracle Arena in Oakland was the home of which NBA team?

The 10-year naming deal began in 2006 and ended when the team moved to the Chase Center after the 2018-19 season.

Oracle Park is the stadium of which Major League Baseball team?

The 20-year naming agreement was signed in January 2019.

Oracle Team USA won the America's Cup in 2010 and which other year?

The team was penalised for cheating in the build-up yet still won the second title.

From what deficit did Oracle Team USA come back to win the 2013 America's Cup 9-8?

It beat Emirates Team New Zealand on San Francisco Bay in what has been called one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.

Oracle's five-year title sponsorship of Red Bull Racing from 2022 was worth how much?

Oracle had already been a sponsor of the Formula One team from the 2021 season.

Which Formula One team did Oracle sponsor in 1994 and 1995?

The sponsorship came decades before the Red Bull Racing title deal.

Oracle's Redwood City campus sits on the former site of what?

The theme park moved to Vallejo in 1986, and Oracle first leased two buildings on the site before buying it.

What nickname did Oracle's distinctive Oracle Parkway buildings earn?

The green-glass towers have doubled as futuristic corporate headquarters in two Hollywood films.

Which 1999 Robin Williams film used Oracle's campus as the NorthAm Robotics HQ?

Sixteen years later the same buildings stood in for Cyberdyne Systems in Terminator Genisys.

Which company did Larry Ellison's protege Marc Benioff leave Oracle to found in 1999?

Benioff had been the youngest person promoted to vice president at Oracle at the time.

Who was Oracle's first hire, employee number four after the co-founders?

He co-architected the Oracle database up to Version 3 and left in 1982.

Which Oracle co-founder and database co-architect died in 1994?

He led product design and development for the Oracle Database from 1977 to 1992 and had been Ellison's supervisor at Ampex.

What stake did Oracle take in TikTok's US operations in the January 2026 deal?

MGX and Silver Lake each took the same share while ByteDance kept 19.9%.

Oracle's purchase of which company was the second hostile takeover in software history?

The deal helped Oracle compete with SAP and become the world's largest enterprise software vendor by the mid-2000s.

Which two operating systems does Oracle develop and support?

Solaris came with the Sun Microsystems purchase; Oracle discontinued OpenSolaris afterwards.

Oracle's founders flipped a coin between the CIA database and a compiler for which computer?

Executive Mike Humphries said Bob Miner told him the story about the two competing offers.

Oracle acquired the Rdb database in 1994 from which company?

Rdb runs on OpenVMS platforms and Oracle kept developing it for years afterwards.

Oracle's Project Jupiter data-centre campus, announced in 2025, is in which US state?

Critics questioned its water and power needs; developers swapped gas turbines for solid oxide fuel cells.

Which Hawaiian island does Larry Ellison own?

Benjamin Netanyahu and his family holidayed there in 2021.

Before founding Oracle, Larry Ellison and Bob Miner worked together at which company?

Miner was Ellison's supervisor there, and Ellison's project included the CIA database codenamed Oracle.