Safra Catz

Safra Catz spent more than a decade as chief executive of Oracle, one of the world's largest enterprise database and cloud infrastructure companies, before transitioning to executive vice chair in 2025 as the company moved to a co-CEO structure. Her long tenure at the top of Oracle made her one of the most powerful women in enterprise technology and a driving force behind the company's costly but consequential pivot to cloud computing.

Born in Holon, Israel, in December 1961, Catz emigrated to the United States as a child and grew up outside Boston. She earned a bachelor's degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, then spent over a decade in investment banking at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette before joining Oracle in 1999 as senior vice president.

Catz rose quickly at Oracle, becoming president in 2004 and playing a central role in the company's aggressive acquisition strategy, including the purchases of PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems and Sun Microsystems, deals that expanded Oracle's reach across enterprise software and hardware. She became co-president and chief financial officer in 2011, and was named joint CEO alongside Mark Hurd in 2014, becoming sole CEO after Hurd's death in 2019.

As CEO, Catz oversaw Oracle's transformation from a legacy database vendor into a cloud infrastructure competitor via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and struck major cloud-capacity partnerships, including large-scale AI infrastructure deals tied to the broader data-centre buildout. In September 2025, Oracle announced a leadership restructuring under which Catz moved to executive vice chair while Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia took over as co-CEOs.

Catz has remained closely involved in Oracle's strategy and government relations from her new role, including an appointment to the US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in 2026. Her decades steering Oracle's finances and cloud bets leave her among the most consequential enterprise-technology executives of her generation.