Commercial Projects

Oracle Unveils $10bn Plan for Data Centre Expansion

The tech firm plans to construct the world’s largest data centres.

Updated on

March 30, 2024

Oracle offices — Oracle is building 20 data centres for Microsoft and Azure. PHOTO | COURTESY

Austin, Texas-based computer tech powerhouse Oracle has pledged to spend a staggering $10 billion in 2025 to implement its explosive data centre expansion.

Oracle chairman Larry Ellison made the announcement earlier this month, saying the company has been building data centres “at a record level” to meet customer demand.

“We’re bringing on enormous amounts of capacity over the next 24 months because the demand is so high, we need to do that to just satisfy our existing set of customers,” he said.

“We’re building 20 data centres for Microsoft and Azure. They just ordered three more data centres this quarter.”

This project follows a surge in data centre construction amid unprecedented demand globally, driven by the rapid digital transformation across industries.

Oracle, which is positioning itself to meet this demand, is not just focusing on the number of data centre projects, but on the size of the schemes as well.

According to Ellison the tech company is currently building the largest data centres in the world to meet the soaring demand for such facilities.

“We’re building an AI data centre in the United States where you could park eight Boeing 747s nose-to-tail in that one data centre,” Ellison said.

He added that Oracle was focused on bringing huge amounts of capacity over the next 24 months, without specifying the locations for the upcoming projects.

The executive further said that his company was working to improve the time it takes to complete a data centre project.

“The data centres take longer to build than we would like. That said, we are getting very good at building them quickly,” Ellison said.

“Getting the building and the power and the communication links in — we’re doing that faster than we have ever had in the past.”

The global data centre construction market is projected to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 6.5%, reaching $73 billion by 2028, according to Research & Markets.

This growth is fuelled by increasing internet and social media penetration, digitalization initiatives, the shift from on-premise to cloud solutions, and growing demand for colocation and managed services.

In February, Amazon Web Services announced that it would invest $10 billion to build two data center campuses in Madison County, Mississippi, USA.

These campuses will be situated in two Madison County industrial parks.

The $10 billion capital infusion, Amazon said, is the largest ever to occur in Mississippi.