Credit: BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash Oracle announced a $1B, four-year commitment to its partner ecosystem at AI World in Las Vegas, covering training, test and demo environments, cloud migration funding and Marketplace sales. It also changed Marketplace rules. The pledge comes as Oracle cuts costs to fund its AI data centres. Oracle will spend $1B over the next four years on the companies that build, sell and install its software, the company said on Thursday.
It made the pledge at its AI World conference in Las Vegas. The aim is to help partners cash in on demand for AI. The money will go into Oracle’s partner programme. It covers training and certification, test and demo setups, funding to move customers onto Oracle’s cloud, and help selling through Oracle Marketplace, its online store for business software.
Partners include consulting firms, software makers, cloud providers and resellers. They build their own apps and AI agents on Oracle’s databases and cloud, or help customers set up and run Oracle software. In July, Oracle also put Google’s Gemini models into the tool its business-app customers use to build AI agents. “Our partners extend our sales reach, expand our delivery capacity, and bring their own innovation and investment,” said Mark Hura, president of Oracle Global Field Operations. Oracle also changed how its Marketplace works.
Customers can now put more of their prepaid Oracle cloud credits toward partners’ products, and software makers can agree prices directly with buyers. Marketplace buying is also opening up in India and Japan. The pledge is small next to Oracle’s AI spending. The company spent about $50B on capital projects in its last financial year and shed about 21,000 jobs as it moved money into cloud and AI data centres.
In September, it set aside $700M more for job cuts it has yet to make. In July, S&P cut Oracle’s credit rating to one notch above junk, citing the cash it is burning. Oracle did not say how the $1B will be split, and said all benefits depend on its programme terms and eligibility rules. Get the TNW newsletter ✕ Close Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
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