Oracle shares have their best day since 1992 after 36% surge adds $244 billion to value

Shares of Oracle Corp. surged 36% on Wednesday, September 10, after strong earnings for the quarter and stronger commentary from the management over the future of its cloud infrastructure business, propelled the stock to a record high.This was the biggest single-day gain seen by the cloud services provider since 1992.

At the day’s high, the stock was up 42%, catapulting founder Larry Ellison to the tag of “World’s Richest Man”, albeit briefly. Oracle’s rally also powered other AI-linked stocks like Nvidia, Broadcom and TSMC higher in Wednesday’s trading session.

The surge in Oracle’s shares added $244 billion to its market capitaliastion. At the day’s high, Oracle’s market value tested the $1 trillion mark, eventually settling at just over $920 billion.
Oracle signed a deal with ChatGPT operator OpenAI to supply 4.5 GW of data centre capacity, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, is valued at over $300 billion, over a five-year period. That is one-third of Oracle’s current market value.A Measure of bookings at the end of the first quarter stood at $455 billion, a 4x jump from last year, and also nearly 4x of Google’s backlog as per Bloomberg data.

According to CEO Safra Catz, Oracle signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers in the quarter and expects to sign up several additional customers in the coming months, pushing remaining performance obligations above $500 billion.

Oracle’s cloud infrastructure unit, which grew 77% in the first quarter to $18 billion, is likely to reach $144 billion in annual topline by the end of fiscal year 2030.

Oracle shares had already rallied 45% year-to-date before the start of Wednesday’s trading session. The 36% surge and subsequent addition to market value also meant it overtook JPMorgan to become the 10th most valued company on the S&P 500.