(Bloomberg) — Oracle Corp. shares soared to a record high after the software maker projected a 70% gain in cloud infrastructure sales this fiscal year, giving a bullish outlook for the closely watched business.
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The company, long known for its database software, has been gaining traction in its effort to become a major player in the business of cloud computing — renting out computing power and storage — by targeting clients focused on artificial intelligence work. Earlier this year, it announced a joint venture dubbed Stargate to provide OpenAI with massive sums of computing power.
The shares gained as much as 15% to $201.99 in New York trading on Thursday, marking the biggest intraday increase since September. Oracle had already climbed 17% in the last month as investors grew more optimistic that tariffs and other geopolitical issues wouldn’t disrupt the software industry.
The race to develop and sell AI software and services has led to a frenzy of demand for data center capacity. Oracle has found a niche in renting out AI-focused computing power as traditional industry giants like Amazon.com Inc. have been stretched to the limit. It has inked deals with customers such as Elon Musk’s xAI and Meta Platforms Inc.
Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz said in a statement Wednesday that Oracle is on its way to becoming “one of the world’s largest cloud infrastructure companies.” The past year “was a very good year, but we believe FY26 will be even better as our revenue growth rates will be dramatically higher,” she said.
The company said remaining performance obligations — watched as a measure of bookings — were $138 billion in the period that ended May 31, compared with $130 billion in the previous quarter.
“We recently got an order that said we’ll take all the capacity you have, wherever it is,” Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said on a call with analysts after the results were released. “This could be in Europe, it could be in Asia, we’ll just take everything. I mean, we never got an order like that before.”
The most “exceptional” part of the report was Catz’s long-term outlook, which suggests revenue acceleration, Brent Thill, an analyst at Jefferies, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. Bookings growth may come from work with OpenAI and Stargate, he said.
