Oracle's 'truly awesome' quarter stuns Wall Street, sending stock up 40% and making Ellison world's richest man

Updated Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 11:52 AM 3 min read

Oracle's (ORCL) massive backlog for its cloud business stunned Wall Street and cemented the company's role as a key player in the AI market, lifting hopes that the broader AI-fueled tech rally has more room to run.

Oracle said late Tuesday that its “RPO,” or remaining performance obligations, a measure of future revenue from customer contracts, jumped roughly 360% in the quarter to $455 billion. That outstanding contract revenue drove the company to project that its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) business will grow 77% to $18 billion in its current fiscal year and soar to $144 billion in 2030.

Deutsche Bank analyst Brad Zelnick called the results “truly awesome” and said, “Oracle has underscored its position as the leader in AI infrastructure.”

Oracle CEO Safra Catz said the software giant signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers in the first quarter. While Catz didn't name those customers, she noted that the company has "significant" contracts with "the who's who of AI, including OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Nvidia, AMD, and many others."

Oracle stock soared more than 40% Wednesday, adding over $300 billion in market value to the company and pushing chairman Larry Ellison’s wealth past that of Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk’s to secure the title of world’s richest person.

The stock’s gain came even as the software giant’s earnings and revenue for its first quarter fell below Wall Street’s projections.

Oracle also lifted its forecast for capital expenditures to $35 billion from a previous estimate of $25 billion as it fills its data centers with the latest chips and servers to support AI demand.

The move lifted AI chip stocks Wednesday, with Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD) jumping 4% and 3.5% in midday trading, respectively.

William Blair analyst Sebastien Naji said in a note to clients Wednesday that Oracle “continues its shift to a meaningfully higher strata of growth” and called its backlog “astonishing.” Jefferies (JEF) analyst Brent Thill said the results support “growing AI optimism.”

Just weeks ago, tech stocks were under pressure as investors worried that the AI-fueled tech rally was coming to an end, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s AI bubble commentary and an MIT report that most companies it studied weren't getting a return on their investments in AI spooking markets during an otherwise slow late-summer period for investors.

Oracle's report on Tuesday, however, appeared to give investors renewed faith in the AI boom. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Nasdaq (^IXIC) were both trading at record highs on Wednesday.