Oracle’s $455bn cloud backlog and Google’s $106bn pipeline show AI infrastructure is driving Wall Street’s rally. Microsoft expands with in-house models, while Apple’s iPhone Air underwhelms, raising doubts over its role in an AI-first market dominated by chips, data centres and scale.
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Oracle’s $455bn cloud backlog and Google’s $106bn pipeline show AI infrastructure is driving Wall Street’s rally. Microsoft expands with in-house models, while Apple’s iPhone Air underwhelms, raising doubts over its role in an AI-first market dominated by chips, data centres and scale.
This week, Silicon Valley didn’t just serve up headlines—it flung them across the boardroom table with champagne and fireworks. Another round of eye-watering, multi-billion-dollar AI deals jolted the market, reminding us that in the current arms race, yesterday’s breakthrough is already today’s baseline.
From Oracle’s shares catapulting 36% in a single session to Google Cloud’s boss casually dropping that “billions” are already flowing in from AI services, the tempo is nothing short of manic. And yet—amid the noise—Apple’s absence was deafening. The images of the much-touted iPhone Air launch landed not with a bang, but with a sigh, like a relic from a gentler time when incremental hardware tweaks were still enough to dazzle.
Oracle's explosive rally was driven by a $455 billion cloud services backlog—representing a staggering 359% year-over-year increase. This backlog dwarfs most companies' annual revenues and signals unprecedented demand for AI infrastructure. The surge briefly made founder Larry Ellison the world's richest person, with his net worth increasing by approximately $100 billion in a single trading session.
The market's response reflects growing recognition that AI infrastructure providers may be more valuable than previously understood. Oracle's revenue projections of growing from $10.2 billion in FY25 to $32 billion in FY27 represent the type of hypergrowth that traditionally commanded premium valuations in Silicon Valley's favour.
Oracle's Safra Catz declared with characteristic confidence that her company had become "the go-to place for AI workloads," whilst unveiling projections that would see cloud infrastructure revenue soar from $18 billion to $144 billion over four years. Google's Thomas Kurian, meanwhile, revealed a $106 billion backlog "growing faster than our revenue," with more than half converting to cash within 24 months.
Against this backdrop of astronomical figures and transformative partnerships, Apple's iPhone Air presentation felt peculiarly terrestrial. The company devoted precisely two minutes to machine-learning capabilities—no generative AI features, no large language model integrations, no developer APIs that might signal genuine innovation. Instead, marketing materials fixated on "soft-touch titanium frames" and millimetre measurements of device thickness.
The market's verdict was swift and unforgiving. Apple shares slipped 3% on launch day, even as AI-adjacent stocks surged on Oracle and Google's revelations. Nvidia gained 4%, AMD rose 3.5%, and the broader technology sector basked in renewed confidence about artificial intelligence monetisation.
This divergence reflects a profound shift in investor priorities. Capital is flowing relentlessly towards companies demonstrating tangible AI infrastructure capabilities and revenue streams. Oracle's remaining performance obligations exploded to $455 billion—a mind-bending 359% year-on-year increase—largely driven by four multibillion-dollar contracts including a $300 billion, five-year agreement with OpenAI.
Catz's bullishness was infectious during Tuesday's earnings call:
"Over the next few months, we expect to sign up several additional multi-billion-dollar customers and RPO is likely to exceed half-a-trillion".
Such statements would have seemed fantastical mere years ago; today they represent the new reality of AI infrastructure economics.
Google’s cloud chief, Thomas Kurian, was characteristically blunt on Tuesday in outlining how the company is already turning artificial intelligence into hard revenue. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference in San Francisco, Kurian said:
“Whether it’s a GPU, TPU, or a model, the payment is made per token — meaning you pay according to your consumption.”
That pay-as-you-go approach, underpinned by Google Cloud’s $106 billion committed pipeline, reflects how the tech giants are converting AI from an experimental technology into a reliable commercial engine.
“We’ve made billions using AI already,”
Kurian told the audience, underscoring the speed at which AI services are moving from pilot projects to profit centres.
The numbers back him up. In July, parent company Alphabet reported second-quarter cloud revenue of $13.62 billion — up 32% year on year — a sign that AI demand is already reshaping the fortunes of one of Silicon Valley’s largest businesses.
Sam Altman and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang are preparing to announce a multibillion-pound investment in Britain’s AI infrastructure, timed to coincide with President Trump’s state visit. The initiative will see a new network of data centres built on UK soil, with the government pledging energy support, OpenAI contributing its frontier technologies, and Nvidia supplying the high-performance chips that have become the beating heart of the industry.
For Nvidia, this is more than another corporate contract. The company revealed in August that so-called “sovereign” deals — national governments seeking to build and control their own AI infrastructure — are on track to deliver more than $20 billion in revenue next year. The UK project is emblematic of that trend: a recognition that artificial intelligence is no longer just a commercial tool for Big Tech, but a strategic asset that countries feel compelled to cultivate domestically.
Huang’s message has found a ready audience. From Europe to Asia, governments have grown receptive to his argument that retaining compute capacity and safeguarding data within national borders is essential if they are to guide the deployment of AI and capture its economic benefits. In an era where control of infrastructure increasingly determines who shapes the future, Britain is determined not to be left at the margins.
Even Microsoft, despite its complex relationship with OpenAI, showcased strategic adaptability this week. The software behemoth unveiled its first internally developed AI models—MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1-preview—whilst simultaneously deepening partnerships with Anthropic. This hedging strategy reflects sophisticated thinking about AI's competitive landscape.
Apple's response? Silence. The iPhone Air launch contained no comparable strategic vision, no roadmap for generative AI integration, and crucially, no headline figure to match its rivals' infrastructure investments. This absence is particularly glaring given Apple's traditionally aggressive pursuit of developer mindshare and ecosystem control.
The implications extend beyond mere quarterly performance. Developers increasingly anchor their applications around large language model APIs and AI agent frameworks. Apple's closed approach risks ceding this crucial battleground to competitors offering more accessible AI tooling and infrastructure.
The irony is hard to miss. Apple—the company that rewired mobile computing, reinvented consumer electronics, and taught us all how to lust after glass and aluminium—now looks like a stylish bystander at technology’s biggest show since the birth of the internet. Oracle, meanwhile, briefly catapulted Larry Ellison past Elon Musk on Bloomberg’s rich list, thanks to AI-fuelled gains that made him the world’s wealthiest individual… for about five minutes. Tesla’s rebound shuffled Elon back on top, but the fact that two men can casually swap the title of “richest human alive” while their combined worth hovers around three-quarters of a trillion dollars? That’s capitalism on steroids—or maybe just Costco’s end-of-month clearance sale for centibillionaires.
The speed of it all is dizzying when you zoom out. Bill Gates had to wait thirteen years after Microsoft’s IPO before he became the first centibillionaire in 1999. Microsoft itself needed thirty-three years to crawl past a trillion-dollar valuation. Today? Oracle adds $250 billion in a week as if it’s playing Monopoly with cheat codes. Against that backdrop, Apple’s market capitalisation still leans heavily on iPhone replacement cycles and the slow drip of services revenue—a formula that has worked brilliantly since 2019, but now looks painfully incremental when stacked against AI’s rocket-fuel growth.
Wall Street loves a label, and for the better part of a year the “Magnificent Seven” has been shorthand for Big Tech’s unstoppable run. But the AI boom is rewriting the script faster than a hedge fund algorithm. The real money machines are no longer just the app-makers and ecosystem guardians but the infrastructure giants—the firms selling the digital picks and shovels for the gold rush.
Consider Broadcom and Oracle as standout examples of this shift. Broadcom now boasts a market capitalisation of $1.7 trillion, its semiconductors powering the core of every significant AI operation. Then there's Oracle, which astonished investors with a 36 per cent leap to $922 billion, driven by its $300 billion collaboration with OpenAI. Far from mere supporting acts, these firms are now commanding centre stage, evolving from underappreciated essentials into dazzling leads. We have witnessed a year of the changing tide that is obviously moving away from glamorous consumer tech towards the rugged, vital infrastructure of the AI landscape.
And then there’s Apple, perched uncomfortably on the fence. The Cupertino colossus has long played the role of arbiter of taste, its hardware launches once capable of stopping the world in its tracks. But in an age where chips and data centres are the real stars, Apple’s new iPhone Air feels more like a souvenir programme from a bygone show than the main event.
Yet to write Apple out of the pantheon entirely would be folly. Its vast global subscriber base—hundreds of millions locked into services, devices, and an ecosystem as sticky as marmalade on toast—remains the envy of the industry. That’s why the debate is no longer whether Apple belongs, but whether we need a Magnificent Eight rather than a simple reshuffle. Infrastructure may be ascendant, but subscription scale still counts.
This week’s headlines made it abundantly clear: artificial intelligence is no longer a lab curiosity, it’s the City’s newest blue-chip. Oracle is flexing with its OpenAI billions. Google is pitching token-based pricing with the cheeriness of a supermarket loyalty card. Microsoft has turned its AI models into a gelato counter with more flavours than anyone can keep track of. And Apple? The company that once defined “what’s next” is at risk of being defined by “what used to be.”
Unless Apple breaks its silence with a credible generative AI strategy in the coming year, the market may quietly refile it under “luxury gadgets”—a reliable cash cow, yes, but not the heartbeat of tomorrow’s economy. One can’t help but imagine Steve Jobs either spinning in his grave or smirking knowingly, already sketching a keynote that would yank Apple back into the centre of the story.
For the moment, the AI bash is in full flow. Wall Street's tipsy on sky-high valuations, and the money machines at Broadcom, Oracle, Google, and Microsoft are churning away. The big question is whether Apple will eventually waltz into the party – or end up hovering outside, peering enviously through the glass.
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