The U.S. economy has an incredible track record of producing the world's most valuable companies. United States Steel became the first-ever $1 billion company in 1901, and 117 years later in 2018, Apple became the first company in the world to reach a valuation of $1 trillion.
Apple is now worth over $3.7 trillion, and six other technology companies have joined it in the trillion-dollar club: Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Tesla, and Nvidia. But I think another one could soon earn its membership.
Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) was founded in 1977 and it has participated in almost every technological revolution ever since. Now, it's quickly becoming a leader in artificial intelligence (AI) data center infrastructure, which could catapult the company to a $1 trillion valuation in under a decade.
Oracle's market capitalization is currently $492 billion, so investors who buy its stock today could double their money if it does join the trillion-dollar club.
Oracle's AI infrastructure is best-in-class
Large language models (LLMs) are at the foundation of every AI chatbot and software application. Developers keep building larger LLMs to make AI software "smarter," but it's a very expensive exercise that requires data centers filled with thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs).
Nvidia supplies the world's most powerful GPUs for developing AI. The more of them a developer can access, the more data their LLMs can ingest and process. The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Supercluster technology allows developers to scale up to 65,000 Nvidia H200 GPUs, which is the highest number in the industry.
But Oracle is about to go a step further. It's currently building new clusters that will allow developers to use up to 131,000 of Nvidia's latest Blackwell GPUs.
OCI's random direct memory access (RDMA) technology is also much faster than traditional Ethernet networks when it comes to moving data from one point to another. Since most developers rent computing capacity on a per-minute basis, faster processing translates to substantial cost savings. That's why Oracle has attracted leading AI start-ups like xAI, OpenAI, Cohere, and more.
During its fiscal 2025 second quarter (which ended Oct. 31), Oracle said GPU usage was up by a whopping 336% compared to the year-ago period, which highlights how quickly demand is climbing for AI infrastructure. The company currently has 98 data center regions in operation, but it plans to build another 1,000 to 2,000 over the long term to meet that demand.
Revenue growth is reaccelerating at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Oracle generated $14.1 billion in total revenue during the second quarter, which was a 9% increase from the year-ago period. But OCI revenue, specifically, soared by a whopping 52% to a record $2.4 billion. That was the fastest growth rate in a year, and it marked the second consecutive quarter of acceleration after a brief dip:
Simply put, OCI revenue would be growing even faster if it had more data centers up and running. Even though the company is building them as quickly as possible, it's still struggling to meet demand.
That's part of the reason Oracle's remaining performance obligations (RPOs) jumped 50% year over year to $97 billion during Q2. RPOs are like an order backlog that should convert into revenue in the future once Oracle can deliver the agreed-upon services. CEO Safra Catz said RPOs will climb further from here, citing a recent deal Oracle signed with Meta Platforms.
Meta developed the world's most popular open-source LLMs, called Llama, which have been downloaded more than 600 million times. The company will shift some of its training workloads to Oracle's infrastructure, and the two companies will collaborate to build AI agents using Llama. It's a huge win for Oracle considering Llama 4 could be the most advanced model in the industry when it launches next year (according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg).
Oracle's (mathematical) path to the $1 trillion club
Oracle has generated $4.09 in earnings per share (EPS) over the last four quarters, so based on its stock price of $177.74 as of this writing, it trades at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 43.4. That isn't exactly cheap considering the Nasdaq-100 technology index trades at a P/E ratio of just 33.9.
However, Oracle grew its EPS by 24% during Q2, which was the fastest pace in almost a year. The company's data centers are highly automated, so they are incredibly cheap to operate and, therefore, carry high profit margins. As more of them come online, economies of scale should result in very strong growth in Oracle's earnings.
Mathematically speaking, Oracle's market capitalization could cross $1 trillion within 10 years if it grows its EPS by 7.3% annually (assuming its current P/E ratio remains constant). Considering the company plans to expand its data center footprint tenfold from here, I think its EPS growth is more likely to accelerate rather than decelerate in the coming decade.
Therefore, 10 years is a very conservative time frame for Oracle to join the $1 trillion club. It could get there in less than four years if it maintains EPS growth of at least 20%.
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John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Anthony Di Pizio has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
