Platformonomics TGIF #120: March 13, 2026

Oracle “Beats”: Q3 FY26

Oracle “beat” the number this quarter and Wall Street sent the stock upwards almost 10%. But that price is still well below where it was before the database vampire’s $300 billion OpenAI “RPO” announcement.

Oracle is exhibiting financial disstress across many dimensions: layoffs, massive amounts of new debt, Larry having to dillute himself by selling equity, negative and plunging free cash flow, elevated CDS spreads, talk of divestitures, margin being gifted away, funding partners facing their own financial stress, capital needs for Tik Tok and Bronny‘s Warner Brothers bid, et al. Oracle is Company Hail Mary and the ball is in the air.

My favorite indicator is how efficiently they’re turning CAPEX into revenue (because of course everything comes back to CAPEX). The trends are not good:

Oracle is getting less and less efficient over time. Just to put a very rough number together for Oracle’s Remaining CAPEX Obligation, $500 billion in RPO at $3 per revenue dollar is $1.5 trillion in CAPEX.

And the comp with AWS is even worse (and completely belies the company’s claim to be “asset pretty light” relative to other clouds):

Oracle is spending $3.18 in CAPEX for a dollar of revenue, versus AWS which is spending $0.75 for that dollar of revenue (and Amazon is also in the midst of a massive—some have called it Stalinist—infrastructure build-out of its own).

Some do this analysis in more esoteric financial terms (big acronyms like WACC and ROICC) and also don’t come away impressed with the trajectory. Jim Chanos’ math is here.

Oracle’s CAPEX guidance for the quarter managed to be both muddled and non-existent. They mostly said wait until next quarter for guidance but hinted at a new magical way to have other people pay for their CAPEX. Unclear if the $50 billion reference here was CAPEX guidance, as some reported, or new financing:

So on CapEx, I think we will get back to everyone after the end of the fiscal year and talk about next year’s CapEx at that point in time. But I will state a couple of things. Obviously, from what Clay has gone through, the most interesting thing that you should start thinking about is the uncoupling of CapEx with capital requirements from Oracle Corporation. Obviously, when we have these additional funding mechanisms, there may be additional CapEx, but it does not require out-of-pocket cash from Oracle Corporation, which is quite interesting.

Underlying that is we remain committed to what we talked about last quarter, which is maintaining the investment-grade rating at Oracle Corporation as well as staying within the financing envelope that we talked about, of which we have announced that we are doing $50 billion this calendar year of that total. So more to come, John, on the CapEx after next quarter.

Oracle isn’t the only company trying to stage a big comeback from way behind…

Missionaries over (meta)mercenaries?

Grok: the Cybertruck of AI?

Another big progressive win!

Although Howard should have moved to Oklahoma City.

“We are getting out ahead of the problem because the practice of requiring these chips is too dangerous to wait for it to show up in Washington,” Reps. Brianna Thomas (D-34) previously told GeekWire. “An employee with a microchip stops being an employee — they are essentially being dehumanized into corporate equipment.”

Beyond the legislators themselves, is this really a problem?

Axios Pro Rata:

By the numbers: Median returns for global private equity, which includes both buyouts and growth equity, came in below the S&P 500 for the 1-, 3-, 5-, 10-, and 15-year periods — all through Sept. 30, 2025.

Zoom in: Distributions have remained tough to come by, with the global PE number below par for every global vintage beginning in 2018.

To find a 2x DPI, you need to go back to the 2001-2003 vintages.