Oracle’s Blockbuster Projections; Apple’s New iPhones

The biggest news today wasn’t Apple’s new line of iPhones—that was about as much of a secret as the time of tomorrow’s sunrise (for more details of the Apple presentation, see below)—but Oracle’s blockbuster revenue projections. The software-and-cloud firm is enjoying what you might call its Nvidia moment. It is finally showing the benefits of signing AI firms like OpenAI to use its cloud services. Its new revenue forecasts sent investors into a frenzy, lifting Oracle stock as much as 27% to $307 a share in after-hours trading, which is not the usual reaction the 48-year old tech veteran gets to its quarterly earnings updates.

Oracle reported that a spate of new contracts lifted the backlog of its business—the work it has contracted to handle but hasn’t yet recognized in revenue—by 359%. That reflects new contracts signed in the August quarter with three unidentified customers, it said, one of which was likely to be OpenAI. The backlog underpinned Oracle’s projections that revenue from its cloud server rental business will soar to $144 billion by fiscal 2030 from $10 billion in fiscal 2025. That’s a startling projection, given that the cloud server rental business is currently only a small part of Oracle’s revenue and yet the 2030 projection is pretty much what Wall Street analysts currently project for all of Oracle.