In a bid to meet the spiraling energy demands of advanced AI models, Oracle is set to build a data center powered by three small modular nuclear reactors.
Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder and chairman, revealed this ambitious plan during a recent earnings call transcribed by The Motley Fool.
The proposed nuclear-powered data center aims to produce over one gigawatt of energy, sufficient to meet the substantial processing needs of Oracle’s upcoming projects, including efforts to create a supercomputer more powerful than xAI’s new supercluster, Colossus.
Building permits for three nuclear reactors
“Today, Oracle has 162 cloud data centers, live and under construction throughout the world. The largest of these data centers is 800 megawatts, and it will contain acres of Nvidia GPU clusters able to train the world’s largest AI models,” Ellison noted.
“That’s what’s required to stay competitive in the race to build one, just one, of the most powerful artificial neural networks in the world. Soon Oracle will begin construction of data centers that are more than a gigawatt. Building giant data centers with ultra-high bandwidth RDMA networks and huge 32,000-node Nvidia GPU clusters is something that Oracle has proven to be very good at. It’s the reason we’re doing so well in the AI training business,” said Ellison.
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 talk about building gigawatt or multi-gigawatt data centers… the entry price for a real frontier model from someone who wants to compete in that area is around $100 billion. Let me repeat, around $100 billion.”
Ellison highlighted the complexity and scale of the projects Oracle has under development, saying, “We’re in the middle of designing a data center that’s north of a gigawatt. We found the location and the power source. We’ve looked at it, they’ve already got building permits for three nuclear reactors. These are the small modular nuclear reactors to power the data center. This is how crazy it’s getting.” Oracle’s chairman remained tight-lipped about the exact location and timeline for the project.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) have recently been gaining traction as a viable power source for large-scale data centers. Notebookcheck notes that currently, there are only a few operational SMRs around the world, notably in Japan, China, and Russia. NuScale Power, an Oregon-based company, secured certification for the first SMR in the US last year, and it’s likely that Oracle will utilize this cutting-edge technology.
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