NEW YORK, April 27, 2026, 08:02 EDT
- Oracle just picked up a new buy rating from Wedbush’s Dan Ives, even as questions swirl among investors over the company’s AI data-center investments.
- Late Friday, a $16 billion Michigan data-center financing deal—linked to Oracle and OpenAI—crossed the finish line.
- It’s not so much about cloud demand anymore—the question is whether Oracle has enough dry powder to keep building without pinching its cash flow.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives stepped in to defend Oracle after its shares took another beating, initiating coverage with an outperform rating. Ives argued that investors have it wrong—he sees the company’s AI data-center investments as anchored by contracts, not just risky bets. Oracle last traded at $173.28 ahead of Monday’s New York session, off 1.7% from its previous close.
This call comes on the heels of Related Digital clinching financing for that $16 billion data-center project in Saline Township, Michigan—built for Oracle, and part of the broader move to feed OpenAI’s computing appetite. For Oracle’s bulls, it’s an immediate validation: funding is out there, but it doesn’t come easy or cheap.
Oracle shares have faced pressure as investors balk at one thing: big AI cloud bets mean cash outflows now, while the hoped-for revenue is still on the horizon. In March, Oracle reported remaining performance obligations—a tally of contractually committed but as-yet unrecognized revenue—hit $553 billion for its fiscal third quarter. That’s a staggering 325% jump from the previous year.
According to Sherwood News, Ives called Oracle’s push a “significant repositioning”—still in its early stages—but said the company could become a “foundational infrastructure provider for the AI revolution.” The analyst pointed to Oracle’s high-performance cloud infrastructure and its strategy to link AI models with enterprise data as central to the bull case. Sherwood News
Barron’s spun the note as a wager on Oracle’s ability to take on Microsoft and Amazon in AI computing. The stock has retreated from highs above $300 last year, but Ives stuck with his $220 target, contending Oracle’s low-latency cloud setups offer an advantage versus legacy, more tangled cloud offerings.
Wedbush set its price target for Oracle at $225, which points to about 27.6% upside from where shares settled on April 23, The Street noted. The core argument? Bulls argue Oracle deserves recognition for its existing contract backlog. On the other side, bears are focused on leverage, negative free cash flow, and risks tied to customer concentration.
Oracle’s fiscal third-quarter revenue landed at $17.2 billion, a 22% climb in dollar terms. Cloud infrastructure brought in $4.9 billion, soaring 84%. Multicloud database revenue? That figure surged 531%, as Oracle database services found traction on rival cloud platforms. Both bulls and bears found ammo in the release.
It’s a hefty funding load. Oracle put its fiscal 2026 revenue estimate at $67 billion, projecting $50 billion in capital spending for the same period. The company also bumped up its fiscal 2027 revenue target to $90 billion. That capital expenditure figure covers spending on big-ticket items—think data centers, servers, networking hardware.
Related Digital and Blackstone announced that the Michigan deal draws on equity investments from both Related Digital and Blackstone-affiliated funds, along with long-term fixed-rate debt led by funds and accounts managed by PIMCO. Bank of America took the structuring agent and financial adviser roles. Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo were tapped to advise Related Digital.
“The rapid progress at our Saline Township data center underscores the urgency and scale of building America’s next-generation AI infrastructure,” said Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. For Jeff Blau—Related Companies CEO and chairman of Related Digital—the financing amounts to a validation of the project’s significance for “America’s digital future.” Bank of America
There’s nothing sleepy about the competitive climate. According to Bridgewater Associates, Reuters says Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta together are likely to pour around $650 billion into AI infrastructure this year. That scale of spending is exactly why Oracle is so keen to ditch its legacy database image and instead pitch itself as the go-to cloud platform for AI computing.
Still, the risks are right out in the open. According to Investing.com, which referenced the Financial Times, investors pushed for fatter yields on a $14 billion bond tied to an Oracle-backed data center rollout. Key worries: construction delays, questions about Oracle’s promise to cover the debt if it pulls out of the lease. Should AI-related demand falter, OpenAI’s rollout stall, or costs jump, Oracle might be waiting a lot longer to convert its backlog into actual revenue.
Right now, this stock’s trading on trust. Oracle’s got the contracts lined up, cloud numbers ticking higher, and fresh financing just closed. Yet, the balance-sheet questions aren’t fading just because an analyst slaps on a buy.
