In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I discuss why Oracle must continue delivering innovation and financial growth while reassuring investors about its debt and Larry Ellison’s leadership presence.
Highlights
00:15 — On the one hand, Oracle has got this incredible momentum in its cloud and AI business, and a staggering volume of RPO backlog, but at the same time, there’s lingering and ongoing concern about the level of debt that Oracle has had to take on in order to fund the buildout of these AI data centers across the country and around the world.
00:49 — It’s got to continue its innovation blitz across all the things it’s doing in OCI, with its AI database, its Fusion Agentic applications, and across the full Oracle product lineup. And we’ll see that this week at AI World. Now, also, the momentum it’s got from its Q1, which ended August 31st: it had OCI revenue up 121% to $7.4 billion, and the guidance for that is very strong going forward.
01:51 — That’s not revenue yet, so that’s one of the largest backlogs any company’s ever had. Microsoft’s right now is $678 billion, so just slightly larger than Oracle’s. But very few companies have ever had to face a backlog like this and the responsibility to build that out.
02:42 — What Oracle has to do is continue to show product innovation and financial growth. It’ll be having a financial analyst meeting later this week at AI World, so we’ll see what comes out of that. Now, the other big point here with AI World is: Will Larry Ellison be there? And if so, in what capacity, and what level of visibility will he have?
03:09 — In early September, for the first time ever, Ellison was not present at all on the [earnings] call. He didn’t make any statement. He didn’t answer any questions. Oracle went public in 1986, and until recently, Ellison was not only on, but he was the heart of those earnings calls, those engagements with the public. He used those to give Oracle’s vision of the future and where Oracle was headed, where the technology was headed.
