Oracle set an all-time record Monday with its bond offering, drawing $126 billion in orders for $20-25 billion in investment-grade senior unsecured bonds. The oversubscription - more than 5x the offering size - eclipsed Meta's $125 billion order book from October 2025.
The bond sale is part of Oracle's $45-50 billion 2026 financing plan, announced Sunday. The company will raise roughly half through debt and half through equity, including a new $20 billion at-the-market equity program and approximately $5 billion in mandatory convertible preferred securities. Goldman Sachs is leading debt, Citigroup leading equity.
What's driving this
Oracle is financing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) expansion for contracted hyperscale customers. Named customers include AMD, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, TikTok, and xAI. The company raised $18 billion in September 2025 following a $300 billion contract with OpenAI, signaling sustained capital deployment in AI infrastructure.
The bonds carry maturities from three to 40 years. Oracle has pledged no additional bond issuances in 2026 beyond this single transaction - front-loading debt rather than staggering offerings throughout the year.
The fine print matters here
Moody's affirmed Oracle's credit rating at Baa2, the second-lowest investment-grade tier. This leaves limited room for credit deterioration if OCI expansion faces execution challenges or demand disappointments.
The financing structure concentrates refinancing risk into a single transaction rather than distributing it across the year. This approach assumes sustained favorable market conditions.
The $20 billion at-the-market equity program provides flexibility but introduces execution timing risk - Oracle will raise equity at varying prices based on market conditions, affecting shareholder dilution throughout 2026.
What this means in practice
The extraordinary demand signals investor confidence in Oracle's positioning in AI infrastructure. It also reflects broader appetite for high-grade tech debt in a competitive capital-raising environment. For enterprise buyers evaluating OCI, Oracle's capital commitment suggests capacity to meet contracted obligations - assuming execution delivers.