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Oracle has confirmed that its plans to raise capital remain unaffected. The statement comes as Oracle navigates one of the most aggressive infrastructure buildouts in enterprise tech history, fueled almost entirely by demand for artificial intelligence capabilities.
The numbers behind the confidence
Oracle’s fiscal 2026 capital expenditures landed at $55.7 billion, overshooting its own $50 billion target by more than 10%. It’s a bold posture for a company that just posted negative free cash flow of roughly $23.7 billion in fiscal 2026, which ended May 31.
Oracle’s remaining performance obligations, essentially its contracted backlog, hit $638 billion as of the end of fiscal 2026. That figure includes deals with OpenAI, Meta, and Nvidia. For calendar 2026, Oracle plans to raise between $45 billion and $50 billion through a mix of debt and equity. A $25 billion bond offering anchors the debt portion of that strategy. Fiscal 2027 guidance calls for net cash capital expenditures of approximately $70 billion, with gross spending potentially reaching $95 billion. That trajectory would require an additional $40 billion in new funding.
Walking the tightrope above junk status
Oracle’s credit rating currently sits at BBB-, which is the last rung on the investment-grade ladder. The company’s debt-to-EBITDA ratio has climbed above 4x. Management has explicitly pledged to maintain its investment-grade rating, a commitment that carries weight because losing it would materially change the economics of its entire financing strategy. Borrowing $45 billion to $50 billion at investment-grade rates is one thing. Doing it at junk-bond rates is a fundamentally different, and much more expensive, proposition.
Why the AI buildout demands this scale
Contracts with OpenAI, Meta, and Nvidia suggest the company has successfully positioned itself as a serious alternative to the traditional Big Three cloud providers for AI workloads. Oracle’s stock has experienced volatility following its financial disclosures, reflecting the tension between the company’s long-term positioning and its short-term balance sheet dynamics.
The next major data point to watch will be Oracle’s progress on its fiscal 2027 spending targets and whether the additional $40 billion in planned fundraising materializes on terms that don’t further erode the company’s credit standing. At $95 billion in potential gross spending, Oracle is playing a game where the margin for execution error is razor thin.
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