Oracle founder Larry Ellison says AI-powered cloud systems will thwart cyber attacks

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison on Tuesday outlined the company's future strategy for building a highly secure infrastructure powered by autonomous systems. He also spoke of the efficiency and practicality of multi-cloud environments for businesses, compared to relying on a single cloud service provider.

“Most cyber attacks begin with human errors … so no human labour means no human error,” Mr Ellison, 80, told a packed auditorium at the CloudWorld event in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The billionaire, who co-founded Oracle in 1977 in California, said the company would move all its applications to artificial intelligence-powered autonomous databases by next year to thwart any cyber breaches faced by its customers globally.

“We are using AI to dramatically improve our cloud security infrastructure and build autonomous systems … our autonomous systems are just like self-driving cars, which are safer than those driven by humans,” said Mr Ellison.

A close friend of Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, Mr Ellison frequently referred to self-driving cars while emphasising cyber security.

“By 2025, we would be moving all our applications to autonomous databases. Besides adding to the security, it will make the apps [software] faster, reliable and customers have to pay less … overall, Oracle cloud infrastructure will become faster and more reliable,” said Mr Ellison, who stepped down as Oracle chief executive in 2014 and is now its chief technology officer and executive chairman.

According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 global risks report, widespread cyber crime and cyber insecurity were among the top 10 global risks in the short and long term, when ranked by 1,200 experts across academia, business, government and civil society.

The global cyber security market, which was valued at $72.24 billion last year, is expected to reach $193.73 billion this year and $562.72 billion by 2032, according to India-based researcher Fortune Business Insights.

“There are incidents where cyber hackers lock you out from your data and ask for ransom … autonomous databases and AI can stop such incidents of data and identity thefts,” Mr Ellison said.

He also underscored the need for having biometrically authenticated login systems in place instead of manually adding passwords to boost cyber security.

“Biometric user identity will reduce the incidents of credit frauds and identity thefts. It could be also useful for many other applications such as passport control, secure school entry, wire transfers, bill payments and pick-up prescriptions.”

Beginning of multi-cloud era

Oracle competes with Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and SAP for its share in the cloud market. Mr Ellison said customers want a mix of cloud providers and it is the start of a multi-cloud era where different companies can offer their products together.

“Customers use multiple clouds but those providers do not work together well as they are not well integrated. Our recent partnership with AWS will solve this problem.”

On Monday, Oracle linked up with the world’s biggest cloud-computing company and its key competitor, AWS, allowing customers to use several cloud platforms at once.

The partnership will allow Oracle customers to run database services on AWS infrastructure, simplifying data management and integration.

It will also reduce data migration complexity, ensure low-latency connections and offer a unified support experience, the companies said.

Larry Ellison becomes the third richest person

Mr Ellison’s fortune grew on Tuesday as Oracle’s stock surged, driven by its partnership with AWS and new AI product announcements.

His wealth increased by $17.6 billion, raising his total net worth to $191 billion, passing Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg ($174.9 billion) and Europe's wealthiest person, LVMH founder Bernard Arnault ($172.3 billion), according to Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires rankings.

Mr Ellison now ranks behind Mr Musk ($250.5 billion) and Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos ($198 billion).

Oracle’s stock jumped 11.44 per cent to $155.89 at market close on Tuesday. It expanded 0.44 per cent to trade at $156.57 a share at 5.55pm UAE time on Wednesday after the US market opened, giving the company a market value of $432.81 billion. The company's market has jumped more than $47 billion in the past two days.