Funding rounds of that size are no longer unusual. The surge in AI investment and the growing need for cloud capacity and data centers have pushed many companies to seek massive financing. But Oracle's recent run has been unusually volatile. Just a few months ago, its shares jumped 40% in a single day, briefly making CEO Larry Ellison the world's richest person ( ahead of Elon Musk).
The markets are a mixed bag in the first trading session of February as technology stocks reach a fork in the road. Bullish performance out of Oracle ( Nasdaq: ORCL) stock is being overshadowed by a declining Nvidia ( Nasdaq; NVDA) share price amid uncertainty around its OpenAI investment, damaging overall market sentiment to kick things off. Oracle has recaptured the spotlight as traders and investors cheer the legacy software giant's plans to pour $50 billion into AI-related capex.
Over the past several days, TikTok users have found themselves at a loss. Literally, I mean: They lost their audiences, and their view counts showed "0." Some people who attempted to upload content about anti-ICE protests or the killing of Alex Pretti alleged that the platform was intentionally blocking them from doing so. Others were able to get their videos uploaded, but alleged that TikTok was not distributing them.
After months of negotiations, TikTok finalized a deal with several US-based investors days before the next deadline, after which TikTok would have allegedly been banned in the US. Today, TikTok was finally divested from ByteDance, which retains a 20% stake, while the other 80% is split between Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX and others. Each of those three companies gets a 15% stake.
TikTok has finalized the deal for its US entity, with its parent company ByteDance selling majority of its stake to a group of non-Chinese investors. The deal was closed just before the Trump Administration's latest deadline, banning the app in the US unless it was divested from ByteDance, which will only retain 20 percent of the new entity. TikTok's investors will own 80 percent, with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, an Emirati-state owned investment firm, taking 15 percent each.
With the first full trading week of 2026 now in the books, investors might be wondering if the strong early start in the S&P will precede even more strength. Undoubtedly, a lack of a Santa Claus rally has seemingly paved the way for a rather hot start to 2026, with some memory chip stocks really picking up momentum while certain semiconductor equipment makers made up for lost time.
The markets are looking to clinch a winning week as they eye the final stretch of 2025. As things stand, all three of the major stock market averages are little changed while the CBOE volatility index is up approximately 4.7% on the day. With the exception of Nvidia ( Nasdaq: NVDA), which is tacking on almost 2% on a new deal development, Big Tech stocks are aimless. The Nasdaq Composite is looking at a 22.1% gain for the year.
The TikTok deal positions Oracle as a key investor and security partner, potentially providing a new revenue stream through cloud services and data management for TikTok's 170 million U.S. users. While Oracle's cloud infrastructure growth has been driven primarily by artificial intelligence (AI) demand, concerns have skyrocketed in recent weeks over Oracle's debt and capital expenditures, as well as fears of an AI-spending slowdown.
After dipping below its 50-day moving average, shares of Nvidia ( NASDAQ: NVDA) are just starting to regain some lost momentum. Up about $2 in premarket, it's oversold at triple bottom support dating back to September. From its last traded price of $174.14, we'd like to see NVDA initially retest $200. Not only is Nvidia still riding Micron's earnings and guidance, but it's also still riding a Barclays upgrade to a buy rating thanks to the likelihood of further AI spending. "We are OW as the company has long-term sustainable growth led by a large lead in GPUs for AI in DC, with further Edge opportunities (autos, robots, etc.) and a competitive moat around a large portion of the market," said the firm, as quoted by CNBC.
The Dow is down about 45 points, as the Nasdaq tacks on another 26 points. After yesterday's Micron-induced tech rally, Oracle ( NYSE: ORCL) is giving markets a boost. All on news TikTok agreed to sell its U.S. operations to a new joint venture that includes the oversold tech giant and private equity investors at Silver Lake. Shares of Oracle are up about $8.50 in premarket on the news.
State of play: The tech giants that dominate the stock market are set to spend an estimated $700 billion on AI, but that money is going toward infrastructure, not application. They're paying up for data centers and chips - the guts that power AI before they have the applications that will make them money. If you draw a parallel to the 19th century railroad boom, they're building the rails before they have the trains on the tracks.
Yesterday, Oracle reported financial results for its second quarter of fiscal 2026. To say investors were disappointed in the results is an understatement, given how poorly ORCL shares are performing in premarket trading this morning. As of the time of this writing, ORCL shares are down over 12% as investors unpack its results: On the surface, the numbers look good. Non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) were up 54% and total revenue was up 14%.
Shares in the company fell by 11.5% overnight after it reported a lower-than-expected 14% rise in revenues to $16bn (12bn) in the latest quarter while revealing it was boosting its AI spending by about $15bn. The business posted weaker-than-expected quarterly revenues for the three months to the end of November, as sales at its cloud computing business grew at a slower pace than forecast at 34%.
Oracle expects its FY 2026 capital expenditures will be $15 billion higher that previously predicted, as the cloudy database biz invests to accommodate AI workloads. Big Red's reason for the extra spending is growth in its Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO), services its clients have contracted to consume but haven't yet paid for. During the company's fiscal Q2 2026 earnings call, Doug Kehring, Oracle Principal Financial Officer, said, "Given the added RPO this quarter that can be monetized quickly starting next year, we now expect fiscal 2026 capex will be about fifteen billion higher than we forecasted after Q1."
Oracle Corporation ( NYSE: ORCL) spent two decades as a database giant before pivoting hard into cloud infrastructure. That shift accelerated dramatically after 2020, when hyperscale AI workloads became the company's defining growth engine. Oracle built modular data centers, signed partnerships with OpenAI and Meta, and positioned itself as the fastest, cheapest option for training large language models. The strategy worked. Cloud services now represent 77% of total revenue and grew 55% year-over-year in the most recent quarter.
But that doesn't mean you should pass up on a chance to make a big swing on the bigger opportunities that fly through your strike zone. In this piece, we'll look at three great large-cap tech stocks that have already fallen far more than the rest of the market and the Nasdaq 100 and might be spared if they have already "ripped the band-aid off," so to speak.
The bearish tilt in options discussions reflects real concerns that go beyond typical market gyrations: Oracle trades at a close to a 60 P/E ratio, leaving very little breathing room for any other than spectacular growth Quarterly earnings growth turned negative at -1.9% YoY, a jarring reversal among concerns about margin pressure The company faces intensifying competition in AI infrastructure from all comers. Everyone from Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to OpenAI is building out their own massive infrastructure.
"The smartest people I know are investing fortunes, to be specific, they're investing their fortunes in building and training these AI models. That's how important [and] extraordinary they are," he said. "I think by and large we are going to live much better lives, healthier, longer lives, eat better food, live in better houses. It should be a much better world because these tools are so enormously powerful [although] some of the things they will do are a little bit shocking."
