NEW YORK, January 1, 2026, 18:05 ET
Brookfield is starting its own cloud business to lease chips inside data centers directly to artificial-intelligence developers, The Information reported on Wednesday. The venture is tied to a new $10 billion AI fund and a cloud unit called Radiant, the report said. Brookfield did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Investors are entering 2026 with artificial intelligence (AI) spending and corporate profits in focus, as strategists weigh whether U.S. equities can extend a multiyear rally. “If companies start to pull back on the capex…you’re probably looking at more of a flat or even a modestly down year,” said Jeff Buchbinder, chief equity strategist for LPL Financial, using shorthand for capital expenditures. Earnings among S&P 500 companies are projected to rise over 15% in 2026, said Tajinder Dhillon, head of earnings research at LSEG, while fed funds futures imply at least two more quarter-point rate cuts. Reuters
Oracle’s stock has tracked that debate more directly than most, making it a bellwether for shifting sentiment into 2026. Oracle (ORCL) shares rose 36% in a single day in September on positive revenue projections, then began to slide, dropping 15% in two days earlier in December, according to a Reuters year-end markets review. The review said that if Oracle is a bellwether, the tech-powered equity rally could face a rocky road.
The infrastructure race is widening beyond the listed cloud giants. SoftBank said it has completed a $41 billion investment in OpenAI, and the company said OpenAI and Oracle, along with other stakeholders, have planned a multi-year data-center initiative dubbed Stargate to support next-generation AI models.
Capex is the money companies spend on physical assets such as servers, networking gear and data centers. For cloud operators, it can weigh on near-term profit even when demand is growing.
Oracle has argued the payoff will come quickly as customers shift workloads to the cloud to run AI. Chief executive Safra Catz said in June that Oracle expects total revenue of at least $67 billion in fiscal 2026 and projected total cloud growth of more than 40% after 24% in fiscal 2025.
The bill is rising. Oracle warned in December that capital expenditures for fiscal 2026 were expected to be $15 billion higher than it estimated in September, and the stock slumped as investors questioned the timeline for returns.
That leaves the Oracle stock forecast for 2026 resting on demand versus discipline. Investors want accelerating cloud revenue without a step-down in cash generation and margins.
Brookfield’s move into chip leasing highlights another pressure point: energy and real estate. Data centers need power, and the market has started to ask not just how much the industry spends, but how efficiently it can build.
Oracle competes with larger cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. For investors, the key is whether Oracle can add capacity while keeping service quality and pricing power.
Updates on cloud growth, pricing and capital spending plans are likely to be the main catalysts in 2026, especially around quarterly results. Investors will also watch customer behavior as companies weigh whether to build their own AI systems or rent capacity.
Interest-rate expectations matter because lower rates tend to support growth stocks by reducing the discount on future earnings. Strategists say profits will still need to do the heavy lifting if valuations remain elevated.
After a year of sharp moves, Oracle enters 2026 as a bellwether for whether the AI infrastructure boom can produce returns without overwhelming balance sheets. New competition and scrutiny of capex leave little room for execution misses.
