"We Are an AI Company": Oracle Drives Enterprise Innovation With AI-Powered Database

[Financial News] "Oracle is no longer just a database (DB) company. We are now an artificial intelligence (AI) company."
At the "Oracle AI Summit 2026" press briefing on the 3rd at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas, Oracle Korea President Kim Sung-ha stated, "Oracle has transformed into a full-fledged AI company by combining 40 years of experience in data operations with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)."
Kim explained, "Since opening a data center in Korea, Oracle Korea has maintained double-digit growth for more than six years as of the first half of fiscal year 2026," adding, "Our customers' cloud consumption has also more than doubled compared with a year earlier."
On this day, Oracle unveiled 26ai, the latest version of Oracle Database. 26ai is an AI-native DB that can leverage large language models (LLMs). Instead of relying on its own LLM, it connects to models developed by xAI, Google, Meta, Cohere, OpenAI, and others. Tirthankar Lahiri, Oracle executive vice president, noted, "Until now, companies that wanted to use AI had to move data outside and separately connect LLMs, which exposed them to security risks and created significant operational complexity," and added, "26ai embeds AI into the DB itself, enhancing both simplicity and security."
Oracle also supports search based on meaning and context. Lahiri said, "An AI vector converts unstructured data such as documents, images, and contracts into numbers that capture their meaning. Similar data points are placed close together in the coordinate space, making it easy to retrieve relevant information." A dedicated vector index has been introduced as well, enabling millisecond-level search speeds even across massive datasets.
The platform provides retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities too. It combines search results obtained via AI vectors with an LLM to generate more accurate and context-aware answers. "This process used to require hundreds of lines of Python code, but with 26ai it can be executed with a single SQL statement," Lahiri explained, adding, "We have also integrated AI agent functions into the DB so it can handle tasks such as planning and querying external information."
This year, Oracle plans to actively expand into domestic sectors where AI adoption has been constrained by security and regulatory issues, including finance, manufacturing, and national critical infrastructure industries. Lahiri emphasized, "Through an AI DB that allows all workloads to run on a single database, we will help enterprises become leaders in AI."
kaya@fnnews.com Choi Hye-rim Reporter