Oracle spends more than $100 million on Ampere chips

FILE PHOTO: A screen displays the logo and trading information for Oracle Corporation on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., March 30, 2023. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

(Reuters) -Oracle Corp agreed to prepay $104.1 million for processor chips made by startup Ampere Computing, according to Oracle's proxy statement filed on Friday.

Oracle also invested $400 million in Ampere through a convertible note in its fiscal 2023, the proxy said.

Ampere builds custom server chips based on Arm technology that compete with designs produced by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, which use X86. Oracle has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Ampere since it was founded, according to filings.

The idea behind the investment in Ampere – and its chip purchases - is to give Oracle's cloud an advantage over rivals. Amazon.com makes its own server chips that compete with Ampere, and Google makes its own artificial intelligence processors.

Ampere declined to comment. Oracle did not return a request for comment.

(Reporting by Max A. Cherney in San Francisco; Editing by David Gregorio and Rosalba O'Brien)