The US software company Oracle has sparked optimism for the future with its latest bookings and new partnerships. On Tuesday evening, after the US stock market closed, Oracle announced in Austin, Texas, an expanded collaboration with Microsoft and OpenAI. These partnerships are to extend the cloud AI platform of the Windows company to Oracle data centers. Additionally, Google will offer Oracle database technology on its cloud platform in the future.

The order books for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and the company's revenue forecasts impressed analysts. UBS analyst Karl Keirstead highlighted the positive forecasts, while Mark Murphy from JPMorgan criticized that the revenue in the fourth fiscal quarter fell short of expectations and the outlook for the current first fiscal quarter was disappointing.

In the fourth fiscal quarter, Oracle achieved revenue of $14.3 billion, representing a 3 percent increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year. However, this was below analysts' expectations. In the area of cloud data centers (IaaS), Oracle achieved a significant increase of 42 percent to $2.0 billion, slightly above estimates. In the cloud enterprise management programs, where Oracle directly competes with SAP, growth was weaker than expected.

Oracle CEO Safra Catz Announces Accelerated Growth Due to High Bookings. In the new fiscal year, the expected boost in AI applications is set to increase revenue by double digits. In the fourth quarter, the company signed contracts worth over $12.5 billion related to AI technology, Catz said.

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"Net income fell by five percent to $3.1 billion in the quarter, as Oracle had benefited from tax advantages in the previous year. Analyst Brent Thill of Jefferies expects Oracle to benefit in the short term from collaborations with Microsoft and Google. The fact that Microsoft is training the AI language model ChatGPT on Oracle's cloud infrastructure demonstrates that the Windows company's AI offerings currently exceed its own technical capabilities. In the longer term, however, Microsoft and Google may benefit more as they now have access to Oracle's data.

Thill was also impressed by the strong demand for Oracle's IT offerings. The already secured future revenue (Remaining Performance Obligation, RPO) increased by 44 percent in the fourth fiscal quarter. Of a total RPO of $98 billion, $12.5 billion came from 30 AI-related contracts alone.

Given this momentum, investment houses like UBS and Bank of America raised their price targets for Oracle stock. Although Oracle missed some revenue targets, the AI story is strong enough to lift sentiment, according to Keirstead from UBS. He continues to recommend buying the shares.

Confidence in the booming artificial intelligence (AI) technology brought Oracle shares to a record high on Wednesday.