Oracle is working to persuade hesitant tech employees to join its Nashville, Tenn. “world headquarters” by offering a brand-new, spacious office space and an on-site Nobu restaurant.
Several years after relocating Oracle’s headquarters from Redwood City, Calif. to Austin, Texas, cofounder Larry Ellison publicly named Nashville as its “world headquarters.”
“This is the center of our future,” Ellison—Oracle’s chief technology officer and former CEO—stated in 2024 regarding Nashville’s growing importance to the company.
The firm pledged $1.2 billion in capital investment over a decade and vowed to create 8,500 jobs in the area. That same year, Tennessee state leaders provided the company with funds to “offset costs companies incur when expanding or locating a business” in the state.
As part of Oracle’s development in Nashville, the company is involved in $175 million worth of infrastructure improvements—including park space along the Cumberland River’s east bank (which runs through downtown Nashville) and a pedestrian bridge linking both sides of the river. The Tennessee Lookout reports that Oracle can recoup its investment via reimbursements covering 50% of its future property tax payments.
The new office—about which Oracle’s senior vice president of global real estate and facilities Don Watson once said in a statement it would “position Nashville as a hub of AI innovation”—will feature 2 million square feet of office space plus amenities like the upscale Nobu restaurant chain, which Ellison owns alongside the Hawaiian island of Lanai.
Bloomberg reports that Oracle has offered some existing cloud employees based in other cities tens of thousands of dollars in incentives to relocate to Nashville.
Oracle did not immediately respond to ’s request for comment.
Yet, offering generous incentives and a future amenity-rich office has only gotten the company so far. Only around 800 workers are assigned to Nashville offices, Bloomberg reports citing documents—compared to over 5,000 in Kansas City, Mo., the base of the health records company Oracle acquired in 2021. Another 5,000 employees are based in Redwood City and Austin combined. The Nashville Business Journal notes that Oracle logged a net gain of just seven employees in Nashville for 2025.
Employees have been reluctant to move to Nashville due to a potential salary cap—since the city falls into a lower geographic pay band than California, according to Bloomberg. Oracle aims to create 8,500 jobs in Nashville by 2031 with an average annual salary of about $110,000, per a 2021 statement from the Nashville mayor’s office.
“Oracle will bring a record number of high-paying jobs to Nashville and cover all the city’s infrastructure costs upfront. This is a huge win for our city,” then-Nashville mayor John Cooper said in the statement.
When reached for comment, the Nashville mayor’s office referred to the Nashville East Bank Development Authority—which was created in 2024 to “encourage and promote the prompt and orderly development of the East Bank,” where Oracle’s new office will be built.
“We remain eager to do whatever we can to facilitate the construction of the publicly announced new campus, and we believe Nashville will continue to grow as a center for advanced technology and related industries in the years ahead,” said a spokesperson for the Nashville East Bank Development Authority.
Still, workers are wary of committing to a headquarters that exists largely on paper. Oracle’s Austin location is still listed as its address on its website, and the “United States Field Offices” section on Oracle’s site continues to name Austin as its “world headquarters.”