Oracle is moving its world HQ to Nashville

Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said Tuesday the company is moving its global headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee, to be closer to a major health care epicenter.

In an in-depth conversation with former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Ellison said Oracle is moving a “huge campus” to Nashville, “which will eventually be our global headquarters.” He said Nashville is a well-established health center and a “fabulous place to live,” which Oracle employees are excited about.

“It’s the center of the industry that we’re most concerned about, which is the health care sector,” Ellison said.

The announcement was apparently impulsive. “I shouldn’t have said that,” Ellison told Frist.

Shares of Oracle were mostly flat in extended trading Tuesday.

Oracle moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, in 2020. The company has made a major push into health care in recent years, including its $28 billion acquisition of the software giant of Cerner medical records. Ellison said Tuesday that Oracle is relatively new to the health care industry, but he believes the company has a “moral obligation” to solve the problems facing the industry.

Nashville has been a major player in the healthcare scene for decades, and the city is now home to a vibrant network of health systems, startups, and investment firms. The city’s reputation as a health care center was catalyzed when HCA Healthcare, one of the first for-profit hospital companies in the United States, was founded there in 1968.

HCA helped attract many healthcare professionals to Nashville, and other organizations quickly followed suit. Oracle has been developing its new $1.2 billion campus in the city for about three years, according to The Tennessean.

“Our people love this place and we think it’s the center of our future,” Ellison said.

Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.