Oracle AI Database 26ai: Powering the Next Wave of Intelligent Data Innovation

 

Oracle has officially launched its next-generation long-term support release—Oracle AI Database 26ai, setting a new standard for AI-driven data management. Building on the success of Oracle Database 23ai, this release integrates deeper intelligence, advanced automation, and a unified data model designed for the AI era.

With Oracle 26ai, enterprises can seamlessly upgrade, unlock new AI-native capabilities, and run mission-critical workloads faster, smarter, and more securely tha
n ever before.

🌟 What’s New in Oracle 26ai

1. Enterprise-Wide AI Integration

AI is now natively embedded across all data types and workloads—relational, spatial, text, and graph—bridging the gap between data and intelligence.

2. Advanced AI Vector Search

The second generation of Oracle’s AI Vector Search delivers blazing-fast similarity searches across multimodal enterprise data, powering contextual retrieval and inference directly inside the database.

3. Model Context Protocol (MCP)

MCP introduces a framework for running and orchestrating AI agents natively inside the database, enabling multi-step reasoning, data summarization, and intelligent automation without external services.

4. Globally Distributed Database with Raft Replication

Achieve sub-3-second data replication across global regions for low-latency performance and high availability—critical for large-scale financial and AI workloads.

5. Unified Data Model

Oracle 26ai harmonizes relational, JSON, and graph data under one consistent model with enhanced annotations for improved AI model accuracy.

6. Transportable Binary XML (TBX)

A leap forward in XML performance—now with sharding, compression, and Exadata pushdown optimization for massive throughput.

7. Private AI Services Container

Deploy and run AI models securely within your own infrastructure. This private AI layer supports NVIDIA GPU acceleration, ensuring data privacy without sacrificing performance.

8. Quantum-Safe Security

Future-proof your data with quantum-safe encryption and an autonomous SQL firewall that learns from past access patterns to block threats in real-time.

9. Cloud-Native Simplicity

Manage your configuration from OCI Object Storage or Azure App Configuration, with built-in OAuth2 SSO and tokenized access—perfect for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

10. Developer Productivity Boost

From no-code agent builders to JavaScript-in-PL/SQL via the Multilingual Engine (MLE), Oracle 26ai makes it easy to build, deploy, and scale AI-powered apps natively in SQL or natural language.

⚙️ Upgrade Path: From Oracle 23ai to 26ai

If you’re on Oracle Database 23ai, the upgrade is remarkably smooth:

  • Apply the October 2025 release update—no re-certification or downtime for most workloads.

  • All new AI features, including Vector Search and MCP, activate automatically.

  • Exadata hardware acceleration and new DR capabilities (Raft replication, True Cache) are immediately available.

  • Compatibility across Java, .NET, Python, Node.js, and OCI/JDBC drivers is maintained.

For Autonomous Database on OCI:
Simply log in to your OCI console, choose your database, and select “Schedule Upgrade to 26ai.” Oracle handles the rest—fully automated with no application changes needed.

🌍 Global Availability

Oracle 26ai is now generally available across:

This release is designed for hybrid cloud and multicloud interoperability, giving customers freedom to deploy wherever their data resides.

💡 Why Upgrade to 26ai?

If you’re running Oracle 23ai—or even earlier versions—upgrading to 26ai gives you:

  • Unified AI and analytics across all workloads

  • Simplified data management with stronger security

  • Future-ready integration for private and generative AI use cases

  • A faster, more intelligent platform for developers and enterprises alike

With Oracle 26ai, your database is no longer just a data store—it becomes an AI reasoning engine for your business.

🔗 Learn More

👉 Explore full details at oracle.com/database/26ai
👉 Watch the official launch video on YouTube
👉 Read more on Oracle Blogs


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