Oracle Rallies on AI Cloud Growth, $664B Backlog

Oracle's stock rallied Friday after the company reported fiscal first-quarter results that exceeded Wall Street expectations, driven by explosive growth in its cloud infrastructure business and a surge in artificial intelligence contracts. The performance eased investor concerns about the software giant's massive spending on AI infrastructure. The Austin, Texas-based company said revenue for the quarter ended August 31 reached $19.35 billion, a 30% increase from the same period last year. Net income jumped 60% to $4.7 billion. The results were powered by a 62% year-over-year increase in total cloud revenue to $11.6 billion. Within that, cloud infrastructure revenue soared 121% to $7.4 billion, marking a significant acceleration in growth. A key highlight was the company's remaining performance obligations, or RPO, which represent contracted future revenue. Oracle's RPO climbed to $664 billion, up $209 billion from the prior year and above analyst estimates. The company attributed the increase to securing more than $30 billion in new AI cloud contracts during the quarter.