In an effort to meet the growing energy demands of advanced AI models, Oracle is set to build a data center powered by three small modular nuclear reactors.
Larry Ellison, co-founder and chairman of Oracle, revealed this ambitious plan during a recent earnings conference call transcribed by The Motley Fool.
The nuclear-powered data center aims to produce more than a gigawatt of energy, enough to meet the significant processing needs of Oracle’s upcoming projects, including efforts to create a supercomputer more powerful than xAI’s new supercluster, Colossus.
Construction permits for three nuclear reactors
“Today, Oracle has 162 cloud data centers, active and under construction, around the world. The largest of these data centers is 800 megawatts and will contain acres of Nvidia GPU clusters capable of training the world’s largest AI models,” Ellison said.
“That's what it takes to stay competitive in the race to build one, just one, of the world's most powerful artificial neural networks. Soon Oracle will start building gigawatt-plus data centers. Building giant data centers with ultra-high-bandwidth RDMA networks and massive 32,000-node Nvidia GPU clusters is something Oracle has proven to be very good at. It's why we're doing so well in the AI training business,” Ellison said.
Ellison went on to explain the rising costs of AI development, saying, “This race goes on forever, to build a better and better neural network. And the cost of that training gets to be astronomical. When I’m talking about building gigawatt or multi-gigawatt data centers… the price of entry for a real frontier model for someone who wants to compete in that space is about $100 billion. Let me repeat that, about $100 billion.”
Ellison highlighted the complexity and scale of the projects Oracle has in the works, saying, “We’re in the middle of designing a data center that’s over a gigawatt. We found the location and the power source. We’ve looked at it, they already have construction permits for three nuclear reactors. These are the small modular nuclear reactors to power the data center. That’s how crazy it’s getting.” The Oracle president was tight-lipped about the exact location and timeline of the project.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) have recently been gaining ground as a viable power source for large-scale data centers. Checking the notebook Note that there are currently only a few SMRs in operation worldwide, especially in Japan, China and Russia. NuScale Power, an Oregon-based company, was certified for the first SMR in the US last year, and Oracle is likely to use this cutting-edge technology.
