Software giant Oracle (ORCL) saw its shares rally nearly 36% on September 10, lifting co-founder Larry Ellison’s net worth by about $100 billion in a single day to reach $380 billion. The surge came even as Oracle missed Q1 earnings and sales expectations, but investors focused instead on the massive 359% jump in its remaining performance obligations (RPOs) for AI cloud infrastructure bookings, which swelled to $455 billion.
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Ellison, 81, continues to serve as Oracle’s chief technology officer and chairman. With a roughly 40% stake in the company, any major swing in its share price is bound to have an outsized impact on his fortunes. Oracle’s wild stock surge also boosted its market cap to $922 billion, making it the tenth largest company in the world.
Notably, Ellison also dethroned Tesla (TSLA) founder Elon Musk briefly as the world’s richest person yesterday, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. While ORCL stock has skyrocketed 98.6% year-to-date, TSLA stock has lost nearly 14% on declining auto sales.
Is Oracle’s Surge a Growth or Bubble?
Despite a mixed earnings report, Oracle stated that its cloud infrastructure revenue stood at $10 billion for FY 2026 and was expected to reach $144 billion by FY 2030. CEO Safra Catz stated that the company has signed billions worth of AI contracts with OpenAI, xAI, Meta (META), Nvidia (NVDA), and AMD (AMD). She also hinted that with more multibillion-dollar deals underway, Oracle’s RPO figure could soon exceed half a trillion dollars.
Oracle is positioning itself as a major player in AI, focusing on handling big AI workloads and meeting the growing demand for powerful infrastructure. Oracle had a similar rally during the dot com bubble, when its stock rocketed 31% in a single day in 1999, on big revenue forecasts tied to internet and e-commerce growth. But that optimism eventually faded as the bubble burst.
This time, however, the market dynamics may be different. With Agentic AI spending expected to run into trillions of dollars over the next few years, Oracle is poised for significant growth ahead. Major hyperscalers such as Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Alphabet (GOOGL) have already committed about $400 billion toward AI infrastructure this year alone, highlighting the huge growth opportunity.
Is ORCL Stock a Buy, Hold, or Sell?
On TipRanks, ORCL stock has a Moderate Buy consensus rating based on 26 Buys and nine Hold ratings. The average Oracle price target of $316.43 implies 3.6% downside potential from current levels.
