Oracle’s $106B Debt Bomb Detonates as Ellison Dynasty Takes an 11% Cloud Body Blow

Some weeks you’re the lion. This week, the Ellisons are the gazelle.

As Luke Combs once famously sang (read with southern accent), “when it rains, it pours…”

And let me tell you, it’s raining cats and dogs on the Ellison household.

Of course, David thought he had Warner Bros in the bag…. before Netflix came in and crushed his nepobaby hopes and dreams with a hilariously lower offer… and then his daddy, Larry (a man who buys islands and Tiktok like they’re used cars) gets kicked in the nuts after Oracle’s (-11%) cloud results arrived looking like a Wish version of AWS.

And I don’t think Donnie Politics is gonna be able to help him out with this one.

So what happened?

Well, Oracle told Wall Street: “Good news! Cloud revenue rose 34% to $7.98B!”

Wall Street replied:

“Yeah, but you promised it would rise more.”

(Source: Yahoo Finance)

And sure, infrastructure revenue popped 68% to $4.08B, but still missed expectations, giving the whole performance big “close but no cigar, just secondhand smoke” feelings.

Then came the numbers that made investors’ souls exit their bodies. Capex jumped to $12B when everyone expected $8.25B. Free cash flow swan-dived to -$10B. 

Oracle’s total debt hit $106B, which is… a lot of billions. And now they’re forecasting $50B in capex through FY26, which is $15B more than last quarter’s estimate. 

Translation: Oracle is building AI data centers at the speed and scale of a mid-tier dictatorship, but the revenue is moving at such a glacial pace investors began wondering if Social Security might actually beat Oracle to the finish line.

Remember, Oracle is essentially the Sam’s Club of AI compute right now… bulk everything, paper-thin margins, and everyone hopes the profit math makes sense at scale. They’re taking out debt and leasing data center sites so fast the credit agencies probably have them on push notifications.

Wall Street asked: “When will this translate into money?” 

Oracle responded: “Trust the process.”

Wall Street: “We watched the 76ers do that. We’re not falling for it again.”

And now we’ve got Sam Altman channeling Michael Scott energy and quietly declaring Threat Level Midnight in a memo. Meanwhile, Oracle is building him GPU palaces like everything’s fine. Spoiler: Sam does not think everything’s fine.

Google’s Gemini 3 gaining ground and Anthropic accelerating faster than expected. So OpenAI is cutting the non-essential projects (health, shopping, advertising) and shifting all focus to core model quality, personalization, and speed. Sam’s message was, “Stop the side projects… upgrade ChatGPT now.”

And you can see why he’s losing sleep. Gemini 3 has 650M monthly users, Google forces 2B people into AI overviews against their will, and while ChatGPT still leads with 800M weekly users, Sam’s plot to rule the world is at risk.

Analysts, meanwhile, are asking very real questions like, “What happens if OpenAI coughs and Oracle catches covid?” 

Evercore’s Kirk Materne even said Oracle needs to explain how they’ll adjust spending if OpenAI demand slows, because right now it looks like they’re building a luxury resort without checking whether guests are actually coming.

Yes, Oracle keeps insisting their data centers are “highly automated,” “cost-efficient,” and “revenue generating,” but that last phrase is doing most of the heavy lifting… and looking a little wobbly under the bar.

Zooming out, Oracle’s market cap is now down roughly a third since its all-time high in September. Investors saw yesterday’s earnings and collectively said, “Put this stock in time-out and take away its iPad.” 

Larry, of course, will be fine because he’s worth $150 billion and can soothe himself by yelling at a palm tree on one of the islands he owns.

But needless, to say, it’s been a rough week for the Ellisons.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Google as mentioned in the article.