Oracle has appointed two insiders to the position of co-CEO, with Safra Catz stepping down.

Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia will both take the top spot, while founder Larry Ellison will remain as chairman and CTO.

Magouyrk, previously Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) president, joined the company in 2014 from Amazon Web Services. He helped build OCI's Gen2 platform that has won major AI cloud deals.

Mike Sicilia, formerly Oracle Industries president, was involved in building AI applications and agents for its internal and cloud services.

"Humanity is investing enormous resources in the race to advance Artificial Intelligence," Ellison said.

"Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is playing a major part in that effort. Clay's years of experience leading Oracle's large, fast-growing Cloud Infrastructure business has demonstrated his readiness for a CEO role. Mike has spent the last several years modernizing Oracle's Industry applications businesses - including Oracle Health - by completely rebuilding those applications using the latest AI technologies."

Catz has been named executive vice chair of the Oracle Board of Directors. She became co-CEO in 2014, alongside Mark Hurd, until his untimely death in 2019.

"Today, Oracle is recognized as the cloud of choice for both AI training and inferencing. I'm very proud of that," Catz said.

The company, long viewed as a cloud also-ran, has seen enormous success amid the AI boom. Oracle's valuation has soared 85 percent this year, on the back of a reported $300bn cloud deal with OpenAI, as well as deals with TikTok, Temu, and potentially Meta.

Ratings agency Moody's has, however, flagged its concern about the size of the OpenAI contract. The "contract size is staggering - highlighting the tremendous potential for Oracle's AI Infrastructure. However, the related risks of the build are significant," the agency said, noting that there was a high reliance on a company that has yet to raise the funds for such a contract.

This year has also seen significant rounds of layoffs at the company, despite the record revenue and growth.