Oracle Frenzy Spreads

Years from now, today may be remembered as the moment of peak euphoria for artificial intelligence. Not only did Oracle’s stock jump 36%—thanks to the company’s stunningly optimistic forecast for AI-related cloud revenue growth—but the enthusiasm spread to a range of companies that may not get the same boost from AI.

I’ll be quick with the caveats, because predictions like this are almost always wrong. AI is being adopted at a mind-blowing speed and investors were surprised that Oracle, a data center laggard, could put up such crazy numbers in its forecasts looking out five years. There are other reasons for investor optimism, including coming interest rate cuts, another big AI chip order for Broadcom and Microsoft signing a multibillion dollar deal for AI infrastructure with Nebius.