s·CEO DailyOracle’s co-CEO structure will challenge the trope that having two chief executives rarely worksBy Diane BradyBy Diane BradyExecutive Editorial Director, Fortune Media and author of CEO DailyDiane BradyExecutive Editorial Director, Fortune Media and author of CEO DailyDiane Brady is an award-winning journalist and author who has interviewed newsmakers worldwide and often speaks the global landscape.
As executive editorial director of the Fortune CEO Initiative, she brings together a growing community of global leaders through conversations, content, and connections.
She is also executive editorial director of Fortune Media and interviews newsmakers for the magazine and the CEO Daily .SEE FULL BIO Departing Oracle CEO Safra Catz in Miami Beach, Florida in 2025.Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty ImagesIn today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on the blems faced by Oracle’s new co-CEOs.
The big story: $100 billion Nvidia-OpenAI deal features “circularity.” The : Up! Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune. Good morning.
Yesterday, Oracle announced a move that is as divisive as you’ll find in a modern C-suite: The company appointed co-CEOs, with Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia taking over from Safra Catz, who will retain the title of Executive Vice Chair.
So are two CEOs better than one? I remember Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEO of Re in Motion, telling me once that he and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis would trade s when an issue needed immediate attention.
“You play these little games where you try to suggest it to the other guy first,” he said.
“I’m really busy, can you handle it?” Coming from one of the leaders who oversaw the rise and fall of Blackberry, that story could reinforce the trope that the co-CEO structure doesn’t work.
But that’s not nically true.
As CEO advisor Marc Feigen points out, the average co-CEO lasts as long in the job as their solo counterpart on average and often tends to perform better, generating an average return of 9.5% in one study he did vs.
6.9% for solo CEOs. Indeed, Oracle stock rose 6.3% yesterday after the announcement. Feigen pointed to three prerequisites for these arrangements to work.
Separate areas of expertise—Magouyrk is an infrastructure leader while Sicilia leads applications.
“Those are the two critical elements for next-generation, cloud-supported AI, which means they can go deep and across,” says Feigen.
The title almost doesn’t matter: In many Silicon Valley companies, a CTO founder is often the duct lead and equal to the CEO.
d values—Many a partnership has been felled by differing personalities or circumstances, such as when another CEO is brought in to fix the blems of the first. a good marriage, core values matter.
“You have to look at hard blems with the same foundational touchstones,” says Feigen.
“One can’t be ambitious for himself and the other ambitious for his company.” method of conflict resolution—There will be differences. How they get resolved matters.
As Balsillie said on the Freakonomics podcast, what the relationship at RIM was a strategic impasse where the board backed Lazaridis’ push to double down on hardware instead of his push for a future in software.
CEOs make bad bets all the time. Co-CEOs need to make bets together. One factor in Oracle’s favor is that Catz herself was co-CEO with Mark Hurd prior to his death in 2019.
Feigen thinks it can work again. “This is the right model for a complex, fast-growing company,” he says. “Two CEOs are not job sharing.
They are doubling capacity.” CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.comTop newsNvidia and OpenAI in $100 billion partnershipNvidia and OpenAI are preparing to sign an agreement under which Nvidia will invest up to $100 billion into OpenAI while supplying the infrastructure needed for the training and deployment of its systems.
If , the deal would bring together two giants from different ends of the AI landscape.Nvidia deal features “circularity”The WSJ says it in a nutshell: “The deals highlight an issue that some investors are calling 'circularity' in Nvidia’s spects, whereby the company takes steps to boost or shore up demand for its AI chips by supporting startups and other companies.
Those companies can then use those funds or new liquidity to buy Nvidia chips.
For every $10 billion Nvidia invests in OpenAI, the startup will spend $35 billion on Nvidia chips, according to an analysis from NewStreet Re.”$800 billion AI revenue shortfallFor AI demand to be met, the industry will need to generate $2 trillion in annual revenue, according to re by Bain & Company.
Unfortunately, they are $800 billion short of that goal, the report says.87% of companies are bullish on AI but struggle to explain whyIn an analysis of earnings calls from the last 12 months, the FT found that 87% of companies talked AI having a positive effect on their .
However, most companies were vague exactly how AI helped, although they were more specific the legal risks it generates.Trump preparing bailout for ArgentinaArgentina President Javier Milei will meet President Trump today to discuss a financial rescue package for the Argentinian peso.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. stands ready to buy pesos or Argentinian debt to p up Milei’s government.
If the rescue fails, expect a run on the currency.CEOs mostly negative on Trump According to a Yale Management School straw poll, 71% of CEOs say tariffs were harmful to ; 74% said the tariffs are bably illegal; and 80% say Trump is wrong to pressure the Fed to cut interest rates.Ørsted can resume work on wind farmA federal judge ruled that renewable energy company Ørsted can complete its Revolution Wind ject, offshore from Rhode Island and Connecticut.
President Trump had susp wind power leases on his first day in office.Supreme Court sides with Trump on FTCThe U.S.
Supreme Court temporarily ruled that it was OK for President Trump to fire the head of the FTC purely for policy differences.
The court will hear the full case in December.Kimmel to returnJimmy Kimmel !
will return to ABC tonight after it was susp less than a week ago when the host was criticized for s related to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
In a statement on Monday, ABC parent company Disney noted that “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”Amazon’s customer-first apach to be tested in courtAmazon will appear in court this week to defend itself from an FTC lawsuit alleging that the e-commerce giant used misleading web design to get customers to enroll in its Prime service and make it unnecessarily complicated to cancel.
The suit is an important test for the company’s famous focus on “Customer Obsession.”The S&P 500 futures were flat this morning.
The index closed up 0.44% in its last session, hitting a new all-time high at 6,693.75. STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.48% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 up 0.35% in early trading.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.99%. China’s CSI 300 was flat. The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.51%. India’s Nifty 50 was flat before the end of the session.
Bitcoin rose to $113.1K.Around the watercoolerTylenol-maker Kenvue’s stock has lost a quarter of its value in 6 months as momentum grows for autism link despite repeated denials by Sasha RogelbergTrump’s tariffs are bringing in a ‘very significant’ amount of revenue, top analyst says: Roughly $350 billion a year by Nick Lichtenberg‘Oracle of Wall Street’ says boomers control the housing market, and their enormous equity will keep them in place — ‘There will be no quick fixes’ by Jason MaSteve Jobs’ intern went on to sell his company to Google for $625 million—he now advises grads to pay to work for impressive people by Orianna Rosa RoyleRay Dalio warns ‘we’re heading into very, very dark times’ and says the solution comes from a Chinese verb: ‘A smart rabbit has 3 holes’ by Nick LichtenbergCEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.
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