Tech giant Oracle is moving its headquarters for a second time, this time to Tennessee, leaving Texas.
Oracle CEO and founder Larry Ellison made the comment onstage on Tuesday with former Tennessee Senator Bill Frist, while discussing health care technology at the Oracle Health Summit in Nashville.
In 2021, a Tennessee panel approved $65 million in state incentives for Oracle, with the company planning to bring 8,500 jobs and an investment topping $1 billion to Nashville over a decade. Then-Mayor John Cooper’s office announced that the company, currently based in Austin, Texas, planned to build the new campus with 1.2 million square feet of office space.
In 2020, Oracle moved its headquarters from its longtime home in Redwood City, California, to Austin, Texas.
Calling Nashville a “fabulous place to live,” Mr. Ellison said Oracle will be moving its “huge campus” to the Republican-led state.
“It’s a great place to raise a family. It’s got a unique and vibrant culture. And as we surveyed our employees, large numbers of employees, Nashville ticked all the boxes,” Mr. Ellison said.
Mr. Frist, a doctor and businessman, asked Mr. Ellison why Nashville was chosen. The CEO, whose company bought electronic medical records company Cerner in 2022, called the city “a health center.”
“We’re moving this huge campus, which will ultimately be our world headquarters,” Mr. Ellison said. “We’re moving that to Nashville.”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Mr. Ellison said afterward jokingly.
According to the Nashville Health Care Council, Tennessee’s capital city has more than 900 companies with 550,000 employees working in the health care industry. HCA Healthcare and Change Healthcare are among the large companies based in the growing city.
The Nashville mayor’s office said in 2021 that Oracle paid $254 million for 60 acres in downtown Nashville and offered $175 million upfront for public infrastructure, including a pedestrian bridge over the Cumberland River, environmental cleanup, a sewer pump station, and a riverfront park.
Mr. Ellison said the new campus will not be a common workplace but a park with office spaces, restaurants, hotels, a concert venue, and a floating stage on a lake.
“We want to be part of the community,” he said. “Our people love it here. And we think it’s the center of our future.”
Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell said his office has been actively engaged with Oracle since he was elected last year, “and it’s been clear that they intended to enhance the level of activity at their River North campus.”
“We are a complete city that also checks the box for business,” Mr. O’Connell said in a statement.
Oracle, a multinational software company, has made another big move, this time overseas, in Japan. In April, it announced that it is investing more than $8 billion over the next ten years in Japan to meet demand for cloud computing and AI infrastructure there.
This investment will grow the footprint of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the company’s cloud computing service, across Japan, it said in a statement.
Oracle will also expand its operations and support engineering teams with Japan-based personnel, it added.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
