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Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison in 2018. Photo by Bloomberg
Feb. 22, 2023 6:00 AM PST

Top cloud providers are jostling to sign deals with artificial intelligence startups that need computing resources as they chase OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. An improbable early leader in the race to rent servers to these startups is Oracle, a longtime laggard in the cloud field that had developed reputational problems with some longtime customers over its aggressive sales tactics.

At least six venture-backed AI startups, including Character.ai and Adept AI Labs, primarily rely on Oracle for cloud computing, according to the companies. Two founders of AI startups who have used various cloud providers told The Information that Oracle can run complex machine-learning models more economically than Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud. (See The Information's Cloud Database of top spenders here.)

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