Tag: Oracle

Posted on

TSMC’s Profit Soars 39% Amid AI Chip Boom!

Chip factory

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has posted a record-breaking 39% surge in third-quarter profit, underscoring its pivotal role in the global AI revolution.

The world’s largest contract chipmaker reported net income of NT$452.3 billion (£11.4 billion), far exceeding analyst expectations and marking a new high for the company.

Revenue climbed 30.3% year-on-year to NT$989.92 billion, driven by insatiable demand for high-performance chips powering artificial intelligence applications.

Tech giants including Nvidia, OpenAI, and Oracle have ramped up orders for TSMC’s cutting-edge processors, fuelling the company’s meteoric rise.

TSMC’s CEO, C.C. Wei, reportedly attributed the growth to ‘unprecedented investment in AI infrastructure’, noting that the company’s advanced nodes are now central to training large language models and deploying generative AI tools.

Despite global economic headwinds and ongoing trade tensions, TSMC’s strategic expansion—including a $165 billion global buildout across Arizona, Europe, and Japan—is positioning it as the backbone of next-gen computing.

The results also reflect a broader shift in the semiconductor landscape. As traditional consumer electronics plateau, AI-driven demand is reshaping supply chains and investment priorities.

Analysts suggest that AI chip spending could surpass $1 trillion in the coming years, with TSMC poised to capture a significant share.

For investors and industry observers, the message is clear: AI isn’t just a trend—it’s a fundamental shift. And TSMC, with its unparalleled fabrication expertise and global influence, is quietly shaping the future.

As the AI arms race accelerates, TSMC’s performance offers a glimpse into the future of tech: one where silicon, not software, defines the frontier.

The company’s latest earnings are not just a financial milestone—they’re a signal of where innovation is headed next.

Posted on

Oracle Cloud reportedly to deploy 50,000 AMD AI chips, signalling direct competition with Nvidia

Oracle Cloud AI

Oracle Bets Big on AMD AI Chips, Challenging Nvidia’s Dominance

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has announced plans to deploy 50,000 AMD Instinct MI450 graphics processors starting in the second half of 2026, marking a bold strategic shift in the AI hardware landscape.

The move signals a direct challenge to Nvidia’s long-standing dominance in the data centre GPU market, where it currently commands over 90% market share.

AMD’s MI450 chips, unveiled earlier this year, are designed for high-performance AI workloads and can be assembled into rack-sized systems that allow 72 chips to function as a unified engine.

This architecture is tailored for inferencing tasks—an area Oracle believes AMD will excel in. ‘We feel like customers are going to take up AMD very, very well’, reportedly said Karan Batta, Oracle Cloud’s senior vice president.

The announcement comes amid a broader realignment in the AI ecosystem. OpenAI, historically reliant on Nvidia hardware, has recently inked a multi-year deal with AMD involving processors requiring up to 6 gigawatts of power.

If successful, OpenAI could acquire up to 10% of AMD’s shares, further cementing the chipmaker’s role in next-generation AI infrastructure.

Oracle’s pivot also reflects its ambition to compete with cloud giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. With a reported five-year cloud deal with OpenAI potentially worth $300 billion, Oracle is positioning itself not just as a capacity provider but as a strategic AI enabler.

While Nvidia remains a formidable force, Oracle’s investment in AMD chips underscores a growing appetite for alternatives.

As AI demands scale, diversity in chip supply could become a competitive advantage—especially for enterprises seeking flexibility, cost efficiency, and innovation beyond the Nvidia ecosystem.

The AI arms race is far from over, but Oracle’s latest move suggests it’s no longer content to play catch-up. It’s aiming to redefine the rules.

Posted on

Are we looking at an AI house of cards? Bubble worries emerge after Oracle blowout figures

AI Bubble?

There’s growing concern that parts of the AI boom—especially the infrastructure and monetisation frenzy—might be built on shaky foundations.

The term ‘AI house of cards’ is being used to describe deals like Oracle’s multiyear agreement with OpenAI, which has committed to buying $300 billion in computing power over five years starting in 2027.

That’s on top of OpenAI’s existing $100 billion in commitments, despite having only about $12 billion in annual recurring revenue. Analysts are questioning whether the math adds up, and whether Oracle’s backlog—up 359% year-over-year—is too dependent on a single customer.

Oracle’s stock surged 36%, then dropped 5% Friday as investors took profits and reassessed the risks.

Some analysts remain neutral, citing murky contract details and the possibility that OpenAI’s nonprofit status could limit its ability to absorb the $40 billion it raised earlier this year.

The broader picture? AI infrastructure spending is ballooning into the trillions, echoing the dot-com era’s early adoption frenzy. If demand doesn’t materialise fast enough, we could see a correction.

But others argue this is just the messy middle of a long-term transformation—where data centres become the new utilities

The AI infrastructure boom—especially the Oracle–OpenAI deal—is raising eyebrows because the financial and operational foundations look more speculative than solid.

Here’s why some analysts are calling it a potential house of cards

⚠️ 1. Mismatch Between Revenue and Commitments

  • OpenAI’s annual revenue is reportedly around $10–12 billion, but it’s committed to $300 billion in cloud spending with Oracle over five years.
  • That’s $60 billion per year, meaning OpenAI would need to grow revenue 5–6x just to break even on compute costs.
  • CEO Sam Altman projects $44 billion in losses before profitability in 2029.

🔌 2. Massive Energy Demands

  • The infrastructure needed to fulfill this contract requires electricity equivalent to two Hoover Dams.
  • That’s not just expensive—it’s logistically daunting. Data centres are planned across five U.S. states, but power sourcing and environmental impact remain unclear.
AI House of Cards Infographic

💸 3. Oracle’s Risk Exposure

  • Oracle’s debt-to-equity ratio is already 10x higher than Microsoft’s, and it may need to borrow more to meet OpenAI’s demands.
  • The deal accounts for most of Oracle’s $317 billion backlog, tying its future growth to a single customer.

🔄 4. Shifting Alliances and Uncertain Lock-In

  • OpenAI recently ended its exclusive cloud deal with Microsoft, freeing it to sign with Oracle—but also introducing risk if future models are restricted by AGI clauses.
  • Microsoft is now integrating Anthropic’s Claude into Office 365, signalling a diversification away from OpenAI.

🧮 5. Speculative Scaling Assumptions

  • The entire bet hinges on continued global adoption of OpenAI’s tech and exponential demand for inference at scale.
  • If adoption plateaus or competitors leapfrog, the infrastructure could become overbuilt—echoing the dot-com frenzy of the early 2000s.

Is this a moment for the AI frenzy to take a breather?

Posted on

Databases to Dominance: Oracle’s AI Boom and Ellison’s Billionaire Ascent

Oracle

Oracle Corporation has just staged one of the most dramatic rallies in tech history—catapulting itself into the elite club of near-trillion-dollar companies and reshaping the billionaire leaderboard in the process.

Founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Oracle began as a modest database software firm. Its first major boom came in the late 1990s, riding the dot-com wave as enterprise software demand exploded.

By 2000, Oracle’s market cap had surged past $160 billion, making it one of the most valuable tech firms of the era.

A second wave of growth followed in the mid-2000s, fuelled by aggressive acquisitions like PeopleSoft and Sun Microsystems, which expanded Oracle’s footprint into enterprise applications and hardware.

Boom

But its most recent boom—triggered in 2025—is unlike anything before. Oracle’s pivot to cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence has paid off spectacularly. In its fiscal Q1 2026 report, Oracle revealed $455 billion in remaining performance obligations (RPO), a staggering 359% increase year-over-year.

This backlog, driven by multi-billion-dollar contracts with AI giants like OpenAI, Meta, Nvidia, and xAI, sent shockwaves through Wall Street.

Despite missing revenue and earnings expectations slightly—$14.93 billion in revenue vs. $15.04 billion expected, and $1.47 EPS vs. $1.48 forecasted—the market responded with euphoria.

Oracle’s stock soared nearly 36% in a single day, adding $244 billion to its market cap and pushing it to approximately $922 billion. Analysts called it ‘absolutely staggering’ and ‘truly awesome’, with Deutsche Bank reportedly raising its price target to $335.

Oracle Infographic September 2025

This meteoric rise had personal consequences too. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder and current CTO, saw his net worth jump by over $100 billion in one day, briefly surpassing Elon Musk to become the world’s richest person.

His fortune reportedly peaked at around $397 billion, largely tied to his 41% stake in Oracle. Ellison’s journey—from college dropout to tech titan—is now punctuated by the largest single-day wealth gain ever recorded.

CEO Safra Catz also benefited, with her net worth rising by $412 million in just six hours of trading, bringing her total to $3.4 billion. Under her leadership, Oracle’s stock has risen over 800% since she became sole CEO in 2019.

Oracle’s forecast for its cloud infrastructure business is equally jaw-dropping: $18 billion in revenue for fiscal 2026, growing to $144 billion by 2030. If these projections hold, Oracle could soon join the trillion-dollar club alongside Microsoft, Apple, and Nvidia.

From database pioneer to AI infrastructure powerhouse, Oracle’s evolution is a masterclass in strategic reinvention.

Oracle one-year chart 10th September 2025

Oracle one-year chart 10th September 2025

And with Ellison now at the summit of global wealth, the company’s narrative is no longer just about software—it’s about legacy, dominance, and the future of intelligent computing.

Posted on

Trump announces massive U.S. AI investment backed by Oracle, OpenAI and Softbank

U.S. AI investment

President Donald Trump announced a joint venture with OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank to invest billions of dollars in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the U.S.

The project, dubbed Stargate, was unveiled at the White House by Trump, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.

The executives committed to invest an initial $100 billion and up to $500 billion over the next four years in the project, which will be set up as a separate company.

Softbank’s Son had reportedly already promised a four-year, $100-billion investment when he recently visited then-President-elect Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

And this new AI investment is over and above the investments from the likes of Microsoft, Google, Apple, Anthropic and many others already in progress.