How to Trade Oracle (ORCL)

Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates worked on a CIA database project named 'Oracle' at Ampex. Inspired by Edgar Codd’s 1970 paper on the relational model (which IBM ignored), they founded SDL on June 16, 1977, with $2,000. Ellison joked that since he was the worst programmer of the three, he would be the salesman.

Oracle released V2 in 1979 (skipping V1 because Ellison believed customers wouldn't buy a 'Version 1'). It was the first commercial database to use SQL. The US Air Force became its first customer at Wright-Patterson AFB. The company was renamed Relational Software Inc., then Oracle Corporation in 1982.

Oracle IPO'd on NASDAQ in 1986 using aggressive marketing, including famous ads featuring jet fighters. By 1987, it became the world's largest database company. However, in 1990, an accounting scandal forced the company to restate earnings for two years, causing the stock to crash temporarily.

Oracle made dozens of massive acquisitions in the 2000s, including PeopleSoft ($10.3B, 2005), Siebel ($5.85B, 2006), BEA Systems ($8.5B, 2008), and Sun Microsystems ($7.4B, 2010), which brought in Java and Solaris OS. This strategy secured Oracle's dominance in enterprise software during the pre-cloud era.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) became the preferred choice for AI companies due to lower latency and costs compared to AWS/Azure for training. Oracle signed a $300B deal with OpenAI. By FY2026, Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) surged to $553B, with Q4 FY2026 cloud revenue up 84% YoY.