Oracle struggles to attract workers to Nashville ‘world HQ’—even with a 2-million-square-foot office and Larry Ellison’s favorite restaurant

Oracle is trying to convince reluctant tech workers to join its Nashville, Tenn. “world headquarters” with promises of a brand-new spacious office space and an in-house Nobu restaurant.A few years after moving Oracle’s headquarters from Redwood City, Calif. to Austin, Texas, cofounder Larry Ellison publicly declared Nashville its “world headquarters.”“It’s the center of our future,” Ellison, the company’s chief technology officer and former CEO, said in 2024 of Nashville’s increased importance for Oracle.The company committed $1.2 billion in capital investment over a decade and promised to add 8,500 jobs to the area. The same year, Tennessee state leaders gave the company a $65 million economic grant to “offset costs companies incur when expanding or locating a business” in the state.As part of Oracle’s development in the city, it tied itself to $175 million in infrastructure improvements such as park space along the east bank of the Cumberland River which runs through downtown Nashville, as well a pedestrian bridge that would link both sides of the river. The company can recoup its investment with reimbursements of 50% of its future property tax payments, the Tennessee Lookout reported.The new office, which Oracle senior vice president of global real estate and facilities Don Watson previously said in a statement would “position Nashville as a hub of AI innovation,” will include 2 million square feet of office space as well as amenities like the upscale Nobu restaurant chain, which Ellison has included in his properties from Palo Alto, Calif. to Florida and the Hawaiian island of Lanai.Oracle has reportedly offered some existing cloud employees based in other cities tens of thousands of dollars in incentives to move to Nashville, Bloomberg reported.Oracle did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.Yet, dangling rich incentives and a future amenity-laden office has only gotten the company so far. Only about 800 workers are assigned to offices in Nashville, Bloomberg reported, citing documents, compared to more than 5,000 in Kansas City, Mo., the base for health records company Cerner which it acquired in 2021. Another 5,000 employees are based in Redwood City and Austin, collectively. The company logged a net gain of just seven employees in Nashville for 2025, the Nashville Business Journal reported.Employees have reportedly been reluctant to move to Nashville because of a potential ceiling on their future salaries due to the city being categorized in 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, according to a press release by the Nashville mayor’s office from 2021.“Oracle will bring a record number of high-paying jobs to Nashville and they will pay upfront all the city’s infrastructure costs. 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 Fortune 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 new campus that has been publicly announced, and we believe that Nashville will only 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. The company’s Austin location is still listed as the address on its filings with the SEC, and a list of “United States Field Offices” on Oracle’s website still lists Austin as its “world headquarters.”This story was originally featured on Fortune.com