Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I spotlight how Oracle’s explosive Q4 results and bold fiscal 2026 outlook prove that betting against Larry Ellison and Safra Catz was a big mistake.
Highlights
00:13 — Oracle showed here with its Q4 blowout that it’s definitely charting its own course. This is a huge win for Larry Ellison, Safra Catz, and the entire company, and it was also a total repudiation of some so-called skeptics or so-called experts who have, for many years now, been saying that Oracle is just not going to be able to cut it in this new world of the cloud and AI.
01:09 — The Q4 numbers reported last week were terrific. But even better was the outlook for the coming year. CEO Safra Catz said, “We expect that RPO will grow 100% for fiscal ’26.” Cloud revenue for that same time will go up 40%, which would show it finishing the year at about $35 billion.
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02:18 — Larry Ellison said the customer demand has been absolutely insatiable. He said, “It’s astronomical.” He said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.” And Larry Ellison, a man who, when he’s addressing important subjects, is rarely without words, said, “I really just don’t know how to describe this.”
03:10 — Ellison has always been somebody who’s taken his own approach. He always defies conventional wisdom. I think one of the things shown here by this stunning Q4 performance, and, as I said, the even more astonishing outlook for fiscal ’26 and into ’27, is that you should never, never bet against Larry Ellison.
04:28 — Ellison relished describing the growth business for the Cloud Database. So it’s got the three cloud drivers now: Applications, Infrastructure, and now Database. Ellison was talking about how, “Hey, we wanted to sell the Oracle Cloud Database everywhere, but to do that, we had to have it available via our big cloud competitors.” He said that business grew 115% from Q3 to Q4.
