AI cloud surge: Oracle’s Nvidia moment? What to know about Larry Ellison co-founded firm’s sudden rise

On Wednesday, Oracle stunned Wall Street when its shares surged 36% in a single day, the company’s biggest one-day gain since 1992. The rise followed its announcement of a series of multibillion-dollar deals in artificial intelligence (AI) cloud infrastructure, including a landmark agreement with OpenAI.

The rally was so dramatic that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison briefly overtook Elon Musk as the world’s richest person before market corrections set in.The $300 billion OpenAI deal and moreAt the centre of the surge is Oracle’s $300 billion, five-year agreement with OpenAI, one of the largest cloud computing contracts ever signed. The company will provide computing resources and infrastructure to power OpenAI’s advanced models. Oracle has also struck deals with Nvidia, SoftBank, Meta, and xAI, signalling its transformation into a core provider of AI infrastructure.Backlog signals long-term growthCEO Safra Catz revealed that Oracle’s backlog of finalised contracts has reached $455 billion, four times higher than last year, and is expected to cross $500 billion soon. This backlog offers investors confidence in sustained long-term revenue, even as quarterly results sometimes fall short of projections, as reported by ET.

Competing with cloud giantsOracle’s position in AI cloud computing now puts it in direct competition with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The company expects revenue from its cloud infrastructure business to rise 77% to $18 billion this year, and reach $144 billion within four years, according to news agency AP.The billionaire shuffleThe surge in Oracle’s stock briefly added around $100 billion to Ellison’s wealth, pushing him past Elon Musk in Bloomberg’s billionaire rankings. Musk, whose fortune is closely tied to Tesla, regained the top spot later in the day. But as AP noted, the episode highlighted how AI-driven optimism is reshaping wealth dynamics among tech leaders.Why it matters for AIOracle’s resurgence positions it as a critical enabler of global AI adoption. By providing high-performance, reliable cloud infrastructure, the company is not just fuelling chatbot development but also supporting applications in robotics, pharmaceuticals, finance, and automation. Or as Ellison himself summed it up during an earnings call: “AI changes everything.”