Gil Luria of DA Davidson says Oracle Corp. (NYSE:ORCL) is well-positioned in the AI market but must execute effectively to sustain momentum.
Positioned Between Leaders And Smaller Players
Luria told CNBC last Friday that Oracle falls just below hyperscalers like Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google, noting those companies dominate customer relationships.
He said Oracle serves as an overflow provider but stands much closer to these leaders than to smaller "neo-cloud" players, supported by its strong, cash-generating software business that funds data center expansion.
Strong Backlog Signals Demand
Luria highlighted Oracle's large backlog as a key strength, saying it ranks second only to Microsoft Azure. He noted Azure's backlog slightly exceeds $600 billion, while Oracle's stands at about $550 billion, compared with roughly $350 billion for Amazon Web Services.
He said this demand for visibility puts Oracle in a strong position, even as it continues to invest heavily in infrastructure.
Execution And Demand Risks Remain
Luria acknowledged concerns about whether all projected demand will materialize, particularly around AI companies' growth.
However, he said recent developments have reduced those risks, pointing to OpenAI raising $122 billion, which he says can fund its compute needs for the next two to three years, including commitments to Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon.
He added that rising revenues at OpenAI and Anthropic, along with ongoing compute shortages, support strong demand, leaving Oracle's main challenge as executing its data center build-out.
ORCL Price Action: Oracle shares were down 0.94% at $173.42 during premarket trading on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
Photo by Rokas Tenys via Shutterstock
Login to comment