Big Red borrows a lot of green, hopes AI will put it in the black

opinion The weather's cooling, and so is Wall Street's patience with Oracle's AI makeover. Big Red is spending big, and the risk metrics aren't looking cozy.

It all started so well in September. Despite lackluster profit and revenue figures, Oracle’s shares climbed 30 percent when its first quarter results for FY2026 revealed its remaining performance obligations (RPOs) were stuffed with the promise of $455 billion, largely for its cloud infrastructure, briefly allowing co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison to claim the crown of the world’s richest person.

Jump forward a couple of months, and the chilly winds of winter are blowing in Oracle’s direction.

As Thanksgiving nears, financial traders have piled into Oracle’s credit-default swaps, in which the buyer gets some insurance against a debt default. The price of the financial instruments insuring against defaults for five years has tripled for Oracle in ...