Oracle eyes massive AI capex raise

Oracle is preparing one of the biggest funding pushes in big tech this year, with plans to raise $45 billion to $50 billion for cloud and artificial intelligence capacity. (oracle.com) Oracle said on February 1 it expects to raise that money during calendar 2026 through a mix of debt and equity while keeping an investment-grade balance sheet. The company said the cash will fund added Oracle Cloud Infrastructure capacity for customers including Advanced Micro Devices, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, TikTok and xAI. (oracle.com) This is a data-center buildout story, not a software licensing story. Oracle’s cloud infrastructure revenue reached $4.9 billion in the quarter ended February 28, up 84% from a year earlier, while total remaining performance obligations climbed to $553 billion. (oracle.com) Remaining performance obligations are signed contracts that have not been booked as revenue yet. Oracle told investors in September that most of its five-year cloud infrastructure forecast was already covered by that backlog, after saying Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue could rise from $18 billion in fiscal 2026 to $144 billion four years later. (prnewswire.com) Oracle’s management bench also changed as the spending ramp accelerated. On April 6, Oracle named Hilary Maxson chief financial officer, and the company said she would report to Chief Executive Officer Clay Magouyrk as Oracle scales infrastructure for artificial intelligence training and inferencing. (oracle.com) The leadership shift started earlier. Oracle’s executive leadership page now lists Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as chief executive officers, Larry Ellison as executive chairman and chief technology officer, and Safra Catz as executive vice chair of the board. (oracle.com) Investors have been weighing the upside from signed cloud demand against the cost of financing it. Reuters reported on April 6 that Maxson was hired as Oracle ramps investments to meet surging demand for artificial intelligence and cloud services, and Oracle said in February that it would split the 2026 fundraising between debt and equity to preserve credit quality. (finance.yahoo.com) (oracle.com) Oracle shares have been volatile as that bet gets repriced in public. Oracle closed at $138.09 on April 10, then traded around $168.86 by 9:37 a.m. Eastern on April 14, according to CNBC market data. (bloomberg.com) (cnbc.com) The next test is whether Oracle can turn that backlog into working data centers fast enough to justify the capital raise it has already put on the table. (oracle.com)