Oracle Can’t Escape OpenAI’s Shadow

After five decades of selling enterprise software, Oracle ORCL -3.40%decrease; red down pointing triangle has amassed a lot of very large customers. But never before has the company’s fate hinged so closely on just one. 

A lot has happened in the three months since the world learned of Oracle’s deal to provide $300 billion worth of artificial-intelligence computing services to OpenAI. That was just one in a string of expensive deals signed by the ChatGPT parent, which currently generates less than $20 billion in annual revenue.