(Editor's Note: This article should have published on June 20, 2025, but was delayed due to a technical issue)

By Adam Levine 
 

Oracle

Under the leadership of CEO Safra Catz, Oracle vaulted from a tech-sector afterthought to one of the industry's prime movers. Catz, who became the sole CEO in 2019 after several years as co-CEO, made a transformational bet on cloud-based software and artificial-intelligence data centers. The company, and its investors, haven't looked back.

Oracle now has a $138 billion backlog, up 41% from a year ago, while cloud revenue rose 27% in the company's most recent quarter. Catz, 63, says she expects the backlog to double in a year, with cloud revenue growing by more than 40%.

The shares, meanwhile, have risen almost 300% in the past five years, and now trade just below their all-time high.

"The hardest part of these transformations is often not the computers, not the software, but the entire rethinking of how to operate in a modern global environment," Catz said at a 2020 Oracle conference, just as the company's makeover began.

AI represents both a threat and an opportunity for tech's old guard, just as cloud computing once was. Oracle looks to be meeting the moment: It has built partnerships not only with other cloud providers but also with OpenAI and Stargate, an ambitious AI data-center project.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 23, 2025 21:31 ET (01:31 GMT)

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