Oracle Corp (NYSE: ORCL) is riding a powerful wave of demand from artificial intelligence firms racing to secure cloud capacity, sending its shares up 33% in premarket trading on Wednesday and putting the company within striking distance of the $1 trillion valuation club.
If the gains hold, Oracle would add about $234 billion in market capitalization, lifting its total value to roughly $904 billion. Its stock has already surged 45% year-to-date, outpacing the so-called Magnificent Seven and the broader S&P 500 as investors pile into AI-driven cloud infrastructure plays.
“Over the next few months, we expect to sign up several additional multi-billion-dollar customers and RPO is likely to exceed half-a-trillion dollars,” Oracle CEO Safra Catz said, highlighting four multi-billion-dollar contracts signed during the August quarter.
AI demand reshapes cloud competition
The surge underscores how firms like OpenAI and xAI are pouring hundreds of billions annually into computing capacity to keep pace in the AI race. Oracle has positioned itself as a crucial player in the AI backbone, even as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud dominate with a combined 65% market share.
Oracle’s partnerships with Big Tech rivals are beginning to pay off. Revenue from deals allowing AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft customers to run Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) alongside native services grew more than 16-fold in the first quarter.
Ties to Stargate and Musk
Analysts flagged Oracle’s role in SoftBank and OpenAI’s Stargate project, a massive AI infrastructure venture expected to direct about $500 billion in spending, as a major tailwind.
Oracle is also providing cloud services to Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI, reflecting founder Larry Ellison’s long-standing ties to Musk. Ellison, 81, who owns 41% of Oracle, is now closing in on Musk in the race for the world’s richest title, according to Forbes.
Ripple effect across the supply chain
Oracle’s results lifted other AI-linked stocks. Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD all rose between 2% and 3.3% premarket, while competitor CoreWeave climbed 7%.
At more than 33.34 times forward earnings, Oracle’s stock trades richer than Amazon (32.34) and Microsoft (30.83) — a sign investors are pricing in continued AI-driven growth.
Source: Reuters
