Oracle’s shares rose 5% in premarket trading on Monday after the company disclosed plans to raise as much as $50 billion to expand data center capacity.
The company said it aims to raise between $45 billion and $50 billion in gross proceeds during the 2026 calendar year through a combination of debt and equity. The funds will be used to build additional capacity to meet what Oracle described as “contracted demand” from its cloud customers, which include Nvidia, Meta, OpenAI, AMD, TikTok, and xAI. Those customers sit at the heart of the global AI boom, where demand for computing power has surged far faster than supply.
The move underscores both the scale of the artificial intelligence buildout underway and the growing financial risks companies are taking to stay competitive.
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Oracle’s announcement comes as hyperscalers and infrastructure providers race to lock in land, power, and financing for data centers capable of supporting large language models and other compute-intensive AI systems. Data center deals reached a record $61 billion in 2025, reflecting the speed at which capital is being deployed across the sector as companies try to avoid capacity bottlenecks that could slow AI development.
For Oracle, the fundraising plan marks a deepening of a strategic shift that has transformed the company from a traditional enterprise software provider into a major AI infrastructure player. In recent years, Oracle has leaned heavily into cloud computing, pitching its data centers as a cost-effective alternative to those run by Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, particularly for customers with massive, predictable workloads.
That repositioning became more explicit in September, when Oracle raised $18 billion through a bond sale and announced a landmark agreement with OpenAI valued at up to $300 billion. Under that deal, Oracle committed to providing large-scale computing resources to support OpenAI’s expanding model training and deployment needs, tying Oracle’s fortunes more closely to the trajectory of the AI sector.
Yet the scale and speed of Oracle’s investments have also heightened investor unease. The company’s stock has fallen roughly 50% from its September peak, reflecting concerns that aggressive capital spending and debt issuance could pressure its balance sheet before returns fully materialize. Shares dropped 11% in December after Oracle reported quarterly revenue that narrowly missed expectations, reinforcing worries that near-term financial performance may lag behind long-term ambitions.
The reaction to Oracle’s plans mirrors a broader pattern across big tech, where markets have become more sensitive to execution risks even as companies commit extraordinary sums to AI. Last week, Microsoft shares fell 10% after growth in its Azure cloud business came in slightly below expectations, despite the company’s dominant position in AI through its partnership with OpenAI. By contrast, Meta’s shares jumped 8% after it reported heavy AI spending, suggesting investors are still willing to reward companies that show clear momentum and confidence in monetizing AI over time.
Oracle’s move also highlights the capital-intensive nature of the AI era. Building modern data centers requires not just advanced chips from suppliers like Nvidia and AMD, but also long-term access to power, cooling infrastructure, and high-speed networks. Securing those inputs at scale increasingly demands billions of dollars upfront, often years before the full revenue benefits are realized.
Investors have flagged that Oracle’s reliance on both debt and equity to fund its expansion could dilute shareholders or strain cash flows if AI demand softens or if competition intensifies. At the same time, Oracle argues that long-term contracts with major customers reduce the risk of overbuilding, positioning its capacity expansion as a response to confirmed demand rather than speculative growth.
The company’s disclosure that the funds will be raised in 2026 also suggests Oracle is trying to pace its financing with the rollout of projects already in the pipeline, rather than flooding the market with new debt immediately. Even so, the headline figure reinforces how far the AI infrastructure race has pushed spending expectations beyond historical norms.
However, Oracle’s $50 billion plan stands as another marker of how central data centers have become to economic and technological competition. The challenge for Oracle will be to convert its bold investment push into sustained revenue growth while convincing investors that the risks it is taking today will not outweigh the rewards promised by an AI-driven future.