“That could be a enormous legal responsibility and credit score threat for Oracle. Your major buyer, greatest buyer by far, is a enterprise capital-funded start-up,” mentioned Andrew Chang, a director at S&P World.
OpenAI faces questions on the way it plans to fulfill its commitments to spend $1.4 trillion on AI infrastructure over the following eight years. It has struck offers with a number of Large Tech teams, together with Oracle’s rivals.
Of the 5 hyperscalers—which embrace Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta—Oracle is the one one with destructive free money circulate. Its debt-to-equity ratio has surged to 500 p.c, far larger than Amazon’s 50 p.c and Microsoft’s 30 p.c, in response to JPMorgan.
Whereas all 5 firms have seen their cash-to-assets ratios decline considerably in recent times amid a growth in spending, Oracle’s is by far the bottom, JPMorgan discovered.
JPMorgan analysts famous a “stress between [Oracle’s] aggressive AI build-out ambitions and the bounds of its investment-grade steadiness sheet.”
Analysts have additionally famous that Oracle’s knowledge heart leases are for for much longer than its contracts to promote capability to OpenAI.
Oracle has signed a minimum of 5 long-term lease agreements for US knowledge facilities that may finally be utilized by OpenAI, leading to $100 billion of off-balance-sheet lease commitments. The websites are at various ranges of development, with some not anticipated to interrupt floor till subsequent 12 months.
Safra Catz, Oracle’s sole chief govt from 2019 till she stepped down in September, resisted increasing its cloud enterprise due to the huge bills required. She was changed by co-CEOs Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as a part of the pivot by Oracle to a brand new period targeted on AI.
Catz, who’s now govt vice-chair of Oracle’s board, has exercised inventory choices and bought $2.5 billion of its shares this 12 months, in response to US regulatory filings. She had introduced plans to train her inventory choices on the finish of 2024.
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