Oracle shares rise on cloud bookings surge amid OpenAI deal reports

Oracle shares jumped to a record in after-hours trading Wednesday after the company reported a surge in cloud bookings and laid out an aggressive growth outlook for its cloud infrastructure business, a development that coincided with media reports of a multibillion-dollar contract with artificial intelligence firm OpenAI. Oracle said its remaining performance obligations, a measure of contracted future revenue, climbed to about $455 billion at the end of the fiscal first quarter, a dramatic increase from roughly $138 billion the prior quarter. The stock rise reflected investors' enthusiasm about the company’s role in supplying computing power for AI.

Chief Executive Safra Catz said in a statement that recent and upcoming bookings will translate into a rapidly expanding cloud infrastructure business. She said the unit would grow significantly this fiscal year, to about $18 billion, and projected it could reach roughly $144 billion in annual revenue by the fiscal year ending in May 2030. Those targets exceeded Wall Street estimates. The company also disclosed that cloud infrastructure revenue rose 55 percent to $3.3 billion in the quarter. Catz added, "It was an astonishing...