Safra Catz

Silicon Valley pioneer Oracle has lagged behind Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in cloud computing—but Safra Catz, who became CEO in 2019, knew large businesses had no intention of ditching her 47-year-old company’s market-leading database software. She has helped the Austin-based Oracle catch up to its rivals by partnering with them to offer their customers the option of using Oracle products in Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or Amazon Web Services. These alliances have stirred fresh excitement among investors, who took note after Oracle beat earnings expectations in September, reporting revenue of $13.3 billion (up 7% year over year) for the quarter; several analysts expect double-digit growth to come. Catz is also bullish on Oracle’s AI prospects, with dozens of recent deals—including one with OpenAI for additional cloud infrastructure to train its AI models.