Earnings guidance was also weak, and the company raised its forecast for fiscal 2026 capex by another $15 billion. The bulk of that is going into data centers dedicated to OpenAI, Oracle’s $300 billion partner in the AI cycle.
“We have ambitious achievable goals for capacity delivery worldwide,” Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouyrk said on an earnings call this week.
Koomey describes an industry where capital can be deployed instantly, but the equipment that capital must buy cannot. The timelines for turbines, transformers, specialized cooling systems, and high-voltage gear have stretched into years, he explained. Large transformers can take four to five years to arrive. Industrial gas turbines, which companies increasingly rely on for building microgrids, can take six or seven.
“This happens every time there’s a massive shift in investment,” he said. “Eventually manufacturers catch up, but not right away. Reality intervenes.”
Debt investors do not necessarily need blowout returns; they just need certainty that they will get their money back, with interest. If confidence wavers even a little, yields rise.
Koomer saw a simple throughline.
“You have a disconnect between the tech people who have lots of money and are used to moving super fast, and the people who make the equipment and build the facilities, who need years to scale up their manufacturing,” he said.
