By Echo Wang
(Reuters) -Oracle is in talks with Meta for a multi-year cloud computing deal worth about $20 billion, underscoring the social media giant's drive to secure faster access to computing power, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.
Oracle would provide Meta with computing capacity for training and deploying AI models, in addition to Meta's existing cloud computing providers, the person said.
Both Meta and Oracle did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
Oracle offers integrated cloud technologies along with flexible deployment models, enabling it to meet a range of customer demands.
The potential deal comes just a week after a Wall Street Journal report on OpenAI signing a contract to purchase $300 billion in computing power over roughly five years from Oracle, marking one of the biggest cloud contracts ever signed.
The company has struck deals with Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft to let their cloud customers run Oracle Cloud Infrastructure alongside native services. The revenue from these partnerships rose more than sixteen-fold in the first quarter.
Oracle unveiled four multi-billion-dollar contracts last week, amid an industry-wide shift, led by companies such as OpenAI and xAI, to aggressively spend to secure the massive computing capacity needed to stay ahead in the AI race.
The enterprise software maker said it expects to sign up several additional multi-billion-dollar customers in the next few months, and that booked revenue at its OCI business would exceed half a trillion dollars.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City and Echo Wang in California; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi, Shinjini Ganguli and Krishna Chandra Eluri)
