Oracle secures $30 billion annual deal with OpenAI, confusing devs everywhere

There are few things in tech more universally agreed upon than the timeless truth that Oracle is the vendor nobody willingly chooses. For decades, the company has reliably occupied that comfortable niche of technology you purchase only when cornered by circumstances beyond your control, usually involving legacy systems, contractual blackmail, or an elaborate practical joke. So imagine the sheer existential horror among senior developers everywhere when OpenAI agreed to pay Oracle, yes, that Oracle, $30 billion a year for cloud services.

Upon hearing this news, engineers across the globe instinctively refreshed their browsers, assuming the headline was some bizarre phishing attack. The disbelief was palpable. Senior developers took to Slack, Reddit, and old IRC channels nobody remembered joining, collectively sharing one frantic question:

“Oracle? As in, Oracle Oracle? The one whose support calls feel like medieval torture reenactments?”

Yes, that Oracle.

One must pause to consider what happened inside that boardroom. How exactly did Oracle pitch this deal? Perhaps they boldly promised, “For $30 billion, we promise our customer support reps will only occasionally gaslight you.”

Or maybe it was simpler: “Give us $30 billion, and for the first time, we’ll actually pick up the phone.”

Whatever dark pact transpired, the result is undeniable. Oracle, once the laughingstock of cloud platforms, the company synonymous with hidden fees, confusing licensing terms, and software interfaces designed by engineers who actively hated other engineers, is now, inexplicably, the provider of choice for one of the world’s most cutting-edge AI companies.

This development defies everything senior developers have believed about reality. It’s like discovering Comcast won an award for customer satisfaction, or that JavaScript became pleasant overnight, or worst of all, that Microsoft Teams is suddenly enjoyable.

Senior devs are confronting uncomfortable existential questions. If Oracle can sell something people want, what else is possible? Is Larry Ellison suddenly cool? Are developers next going to embrace Oracle Linux voluntarily, perhaps even enthusiastically, installing it on personal machines to impress friends at cocktail parties?

One senior backend engineer at a Fortune 500 company expressed it plainly:

“I spent my career mocking Oracle. Our annual Christmas party tradition was making Oracle jokes around a bonfire fueled by Oracle licensing agreements. Now, what do we do, apologize? Start liking them ironically, like a vinyl collection or 90s fashion? My entire identity is collapsing.”

Yet here we are. Oracle, the company that made billions despite seemingly universal resentment, is now set to dominate a cloud deal so massive that AWS and Azure executives are probably whispering nervously in their sleep.

It’s not just that someone is paying Oracle $30 billion a year. It’s that they’re doing so willingly. Enthusiastically, even. One can only fear what comes next: Oracle branded IDEs, Oracle social media apps, Oracle developer conferences that developers might actually attend willingly, without bribery or coercion.

In this brave new world, perhaps the greatest shock of all isn’t that Oracle finally sold something people want. It’s that developers might soon admit they actually like it.