[Digital Today reporter Jin-ho Lee] "Oracle is no longer a database company. It is, in name and reality, an artificial intelligence (AI) company. We will bring together more than 40 years of accumulated data know-how and continue our journey as an AI company." (Kim Seong-ha (김성하), head of Korea Oracle)

Oracle is positioning AI as its corporate identity and speeding up its drive into the enterprise market. It is stepping up a data platform strategy built around its next-generation AI database, '26AI', which ties together everything from data management to running AI functions.

Korea Oracle held 'Oracle AI Summit 2026' on Feb. 3 at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas. The event shares Oracle's technology strategy and success stories from companies in South Korea and abroad. At a press briefing the same day, Oracle presented data management capabilities and vector-based search technology as differentiators.

At the briefing, Kim said Oracle has posted double-digit annual growth since it set up its first data center in South Korea 6 years ago. As more companies adopt cloud services for core operations, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) revenue in South Korea more than doubled last year from the year before.

Kim presented robust data management as a requirement for enterprise companies to grow. He said he aims to support growth in enterprise industries with Oracle's AI data platform. Kim said, "Oracle will bring together more than 40 years of accumulated data know-how and continue our journey as an AI company."

Oracle is targeting the enterprise market with 'Oracle AI for Data' as a core value. AI for Data is a strategy to embed AI into the core of the data platform.

The next-generation database '26AI' is the tool it is putting forward. 26AI is designed to embed AI vector technology together with large language models (LLMs). Vectors refer to converting data content into numerical form for storage. With retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-based vector search, it can find not only keywords but also semantically similar information. It implemented search speeds in milliseconds even in large-scale data environments.

If existing databases have strengths in handling structured data centered on numbers and text, 26AI can quickly be used by understanding the meaning of data as well. It also provides a function that takes a description of the desired task in natural language and converts it into SQL, the language understood by databases, to carry out the work.

Tirthankar Lahiri (티르탄카르 라히리), senior vice president of Oracle's Mission Critical Data and AI Engines division, said, "26AI is an AI-native DB designed with AI and data together from the start." He added, "We will use the data companies have on an AI vector basis and connect it to real business outcomes."

Lahiri also stressed that because it has a full stack of necessary AI functions, companies can flexibly adopt AI solutions as needed and shorten the time to generating results.

Lahiri also expressed confidence despite a trend of companies moving to open-source databases such as PostgreSQL. He said, "In mission-critical enterprise environments, open-source databases do not meet the required level," and stressed that Oracle DB is similar in price to open-source databases while its performance is 10 times better.