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- Oracle rides $455B AI boom, Claude expands into Office 365, RSL standard reshapes content rights
Oracle rides $455B AI boom, Claude expands into Office 365, RSL standard reshapes content rights
Cyrus Shirazian
September 14, 2025
AI Headlines of the Past Week
1) AI infrastructure becomes the profit center: Oracle locks in $455B backlog; ~$300B reportedly from OpenAI
What happened: Oracle said it secured four multibillion‑dollar AI infra contracts, guiding its revenue backlog past $500B. A WSJ report pegs OpenAI at ~$300B of that (around $60B annually starting in 2027). Oracle projects cloud infra revenue rising from ~$18B this year to ~$144B within five years; its stock posted its best one‑day gain since 1992.
Why it matters to SMBs
Big buyers are pre‑booking compute, which can constrain capacity and keep prices elevated for everyone else.
Your AI unit economics (per‑task or per‑doc costs) will swing more with infra pricing than with model list prices.
Vendor concentration risk grows as hyperscalers sign decade‑scale deals.
Recommended next steps
Run a 12–24 month “AI compute” budget scenario (base/upside/stress) covering training, fine‑tuning, and inference.
Adopt a multi‑cloud & model‑flex strategy: keep two viable providers and at least one smaller/alternative GPU partner on your bench.
Prioritize efficiency: use smaller/faster models where quality allows; cache, batch, and distill to cut inference bills.
2) Content rules are tightening: Publishers launch RSL; Britannica/Merriam‑Webster sue Perplexity; FTC probes youth impacts
What happened: Major publishers rolled out Real Simple Licensing (RSL)—a robots.txt‑based protocol to declare licensing/payment terms for AI crawlers. Separately, Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam‑Webster sued Perplexity over alleged copying/diversion, and the FTC opened a probe into leading AI firms over chatbots’ effects on children/teens.
Why it matters to SMBs
If your site feeds customers or prospects, AI crawlers may soon pay or be blocked—decide your stance.
Using third‑party content in AI workflows now carries clearer legal exposure (training, summarization, republishing).
AI search visibility is shifting fast; compliance signals (and licensing) can influence who gets surfaced.
Recommended next steps
Set a robots.txt policy aligned to RSL concepts (permit, price, or prohibit). Document rationale for Legal/Comms.
Audit AI content supply chains (vendors, datasets, prompts) and maintain a log of licenses/attributions.
Update your content & AI‑use policy—what staff can paste/upload; what sources are prohibited without permission.
3) File‑native AI hits the office suite: Claude can create Excel/PPT/PDF; Microsoft reportedly eyeing Claude for O365
What happened: Anthropic added direct file creation/editing (Excel, Word/Docs, PowerPoint/Slides, PDFs) inside Claude, plus memory for Teams/Enterprise. Reporting indicates Microsoft is moving to integrate Anthropic models into Office 365 alongside OpenAI’s tech.
Why it matters to SMBs
Routine document work (reports, QBR decks, budget models) is now low‑friction to automate, not just “assist.”
File generation raises data‑handling risks (PII, contracts) if guardrails aren’t in place.
Vendor diversification inside core suites means you can choose models per task (e.g., slide creation vs analysis).
Recommended next steps
Launch a 30‑day “document automation” pilot on non‑sensitive workflows (monthly ops pack, sales QBR, inventory report).
Define a data red‑list (what never goes into AI) and turn on enterprise controls (logging, retention, domain limits).
Measure ROI: time saved per artifact, error rates vs. baseline, and AI‑driven rework to justify scale‑up.