Catenaa, Friday, November 14, 2025- Oracle has been hit harder than big tech rivals in the recent sell-off of tech stocks and bonds, as its vast borrowing to fund a pivot to AI unnerved Wall Street.
The US software group founded by Larry Ellison has made a dramatic entrance to the AI race, committing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the next few years on chips and data centres, largely as part of deals to supply computing capacity to OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
The speed and scale of its moves have unsettled some investors at a time when markets are keenly focused on the spending of so-called hyperscalers, big tech companies building vast data centres.
Oracle shares are down almost 27% in the past month, nearly twice the fall of the next worst-performing hyperscaler, Meta.
The slide has reversed more than $250 billion of gains in its market value when the Texas-based group disclosed its deals with OpenAI in September.
A Financial Times index tracking the price of Oracle’s debt has fallen about 6% since mid-September, significantly worse than any of its major peers.
Oracle has prompted particular concern because the group shifted from business software to cloud computing later than its rivals.
Its strategy has become more focused on an all-out bet on AI, pinned largely to the success of OpenAI. “This is a completely different business model to what investors prize in cloud services,” said Alex Haissl at Rothschild & Co Redburn.
Oracle has said its deals with OpenAI would generate $300bn of revenue between 2027 and 2032. Its executives say the rewards will justify the risks due to intense and accelerating AI demand, which far exceeds existing supplies of computing power. Its shares are still up 30% this year.
