Oracle Corporation Founded to Build CIA Database, Named After CIA Project

Computer programmers Larry Ellison and Robert Miner founded the company that would become Oracle Corporation in 1977 after persuading the CIA to let them pick up a lapsed $50,000 contract to build a special database program. The company takes its name from “Project Oracle,” a CIA operation that Ellison worked on. This contract to build relational database software for the Central Intelligence Agency became the foundation of what would grow into one of the world’s largest enterprise software companies.

The CIA became Oracle’s first customer, establishing a relationship between the intelligence community and the database company that would persist and expand for decades. The federal government’s early adoption and support of Oracle’s technology proved crucial to the company’s commercial success, as government contracts validated the technology and provided revenue during Oracle’s formative years.

By 2003, the federal government accounted for 23 percent of Oracle’s licensing revenue—approximately $2.5 billion annually—demonstrating how the initial CIA relationship evolved into comprehensive dependence by U.S. government agencies on Oracle’s database infrastructure. This origin story reveals how intelligence agency contracts can create and sustain major technology corporations, blurring the lines between private enterprise and state surveillance apparatus from a company’s inception. Oracle’s case exemplifies the revolving door between Silicon Valley and the national security state, where companies born from intelligence contracts maintain privileged access to government funding and classified operations throughout their existence.