Oracle Takes A Run At Cloud's Big Three

The stock's latest advance came on news the software company is forming a US100-billion joint venture with SoftBank Group and OpenAI to fund an expansion of data centres to support a business in which Oracle lags behind rivals like Amazon.com and Microsoft.

"This certainly has us looking at the name in a way we hadn't before, since this could represent a meaningful inflection in growth," said Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls Snyder. "It seems like it is in good company here, but my main hesitation is about how long this halo might last, since the stock has really rocketed."

Oracle shares have performed like some of the tech giants that have driven the market's gains for the past two years, as it seeks to establish itself as a major player in cloud computing. The stock is up more than 10 in January after posting a nearly 60 gain last year, its best performance since 1999.

The joint venture has a goal of growing to "at least" 500-billion, which would be considerable in comparison to the tens of billions of dollars that megacaps have poured into AI. UBS expects the combined capex of major tech companies will come in at 280-billion in 2025.

"This is all very speculative, and potentially meaningful, but it sounds crazy to me in a lot of ways," Ghriskey said. "It is good to be on Trump's good side, but that can be a short-term thing."