Are
Oracle
and
Microsoft
rivals or partners when it comes to artificial intelligence? Both, judging by their latest announcements.
Oracle
’s
recent earnings staked out its claim to be an AI winner as it reported strong demand for its cloud services. That has boosted its stock and helped it get an upgrade to Buy from Hold by analysts at Argus Research on Thursday.
Oracle is now looking to build on that platform with a flurry of AI announcements on Thursday across its software suite, which it said would add the technology to finance, supply chains, human resources, sales, and marketing products.
That looks like a challenge to
Microsoft
’s
various AI-powered Copilot features for corporate software. While Microsoft has financially backed OpenAI and then used its technology to attract customers, Oracle has invested in generative AI company Cohere—also backed by
Nvidia
—in the hope of the same kind of virtuous circle. So the two companies are rivals.
However, nothing’s quite that simple.
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Also on Thursday, Microsoft and Oracle jointly said they were expanding a partnership. That deal allows customers to access Oracle database services, running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure hardware—but deployed in Microsoft’s Azure data centers and with access to its AI services. The companies said they would expand the offering to five more regions, bringing its availability to 15 regions globally.
Companies have increasingly given up on the idea of locking their cloud-computing customers solely into their own services—now AI looks likely to follow the same path.
Meta to Shut Down Tool Used for Tracking Misinformation
Meta Platforms
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said Thursday that it plans to shut down a data tool that allows users to monitor the spread of content across Facebook and Instagram. It’s a move that might limit embarrassing headlines but also raises questions about its transparency at a time when it hopes to benefit from TikTok’s political woes.
Meta
said it would decommission CrowdTangle, a tool that could be used to see how particular content went viral, in five months. It has been used by news outlets to highlight how misinformation is shared on social media.
Meta said it would replace CrowdTangle with an alternative called the Meta Content Library, which will be available only to academic and nonprofit researchers, not to most news outlets. That could help avoid unwelcome reporting in the final months of the U.S. election campaign.
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To be fair, Meta might question why it should have to share such information with nosy journalists in any case—especially if rivals are even less forthcoming. But considering that one of the complaints against TikTok is the spread of misinformation on the video platform, it’s at least questionable timing.
If Meta wants to be seen as one of the good guys when it comes to social media, it might find more transparency rather than less is the key.
Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com
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