Oracle appoints Hilary Maxson as CFO to manage its $50 billion AI data centre push

Oracle has appointed Hilary Maxson, former group CFO at Schneider Electric, as its new chief financial officer effective April 6, 2026. The hire comes as Oracle commits $50 billion in capital expenditure for AI data centre construction, lays off up to 30,000 employees globally, and operates as a central partner in the Stargate AI infrastructure joint venture with OpenAI and SoftBank. Maxson's background in capital-intensive industrial transformation at Schneider Electric and AES Corporation is seen as directly relevant to Oracle's pivot from enterprise software to AI cloud infrastructure. The CFO role had been vacant for over a decade under Safra Catz's combined CEO/CFO structure and was only reinstated after Catz moved to executive vice chair in September 2025.