Systems Software

Palantir Technologies has been named a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stock, with the rating driven by the size of recent changes in consensus earnings estimates along with three other earnings-related factors. For the current quarter, Palantir is expected to post earnings of $0.42 per share, a change of +100% from the year-ago quarter, while the consensus estimate has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. The consensus earnings estimate of $1.61 for the current fiscal year indicates a year-over-year change of +114.7%, and the next fiscal year's consensus estimate of $2.26 indicates a change of +40.2%, both unchanged over the past month. On the revenue side, the consensus sales estimate for the current quarter of $2.17 billion indicates a year-over-year change of +84%, while estimates of $8.19 billion and $11.67 billion for the current and next fiscal years indicate changes of +83% and +42.5%, respectively. In its last reported quarter, Palantir reported revenues of $1.94 billion, a year-over-year change of +92.8%, and EPS of $0.41 versus $0.16 a year ago, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.81 billion by a revenue surprise of +7.16% and posting an EPS surprise of +17.14%.

Palantir Technologies Inc. has secured a formal program of record designation for its Maven Smart System from the U.S. Department of War, with department-wide implementation set to take effect by the end of September. The designation expands the system's application across the Space Force, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and the Army. The development comes as investors await Palantir's third-quarter earnings report scheduled for November 2, which will show whether commercial growth sustains its pace. In the second quarter, revenues from the U.S. Commercial and U.S. Government segments jumped 149% and 90% year-over-year respectively, while international Commercial and Government revenues climbed 26% and 42%, supporting 93% overall topline growth and 225% year-over-year growth in bottom line figures. U.S. government revenue reached $809 million, nearly matching commercial revenues, keeping results closely tied to federal budget cycles. The company carries a $460.88 billion market capitalization, trades at a trailing P/E of 163.92x and a forward P/E of 85.47x, and holds only $211.4 million in total debt, a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.14%. Hedge fund ownership declined from 96 funds in Q1 2026 to 86 funds in the following quarter, while short interest sits at 2.83%.

Oracle and We Energies announced a nuclear power subscription deal on October 2, 2026, under which Oracle will take 10-20% of the output from the Point Beach Nuclear Plant, or 125-250 megawatts, for the $15 billion Lighthouse Campus AI data center in Port Washington, Wisconsin. The campus, co-developed by Oracle, OpenAI, and Vantage Data Centers as part of the broader Stargate initiative, is designed to house close to 1 gigawatt of AI capacity within a 1.3 gigawatt total electrical footprint, with completion targeted for 2028. Oracle has committed to fully funding the energy costs for its portion, and the deal is the primary driver of a proposed $176 million electric rate hike for We Energies customers in 2027, accounting for roughly 20% of that increase, while the utility projects the arrangement will save customers approximately $300 million in fuel costs between 2027 and 2033. The subscription, a first-of-its-kind model in Wisconsin, requires approval from the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, which is weighing whether to require tech companies to cover 100% of new power plant costs. The deal is part of an industry-wide pivot in which Big Tech has contracted over 10 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the United States over the past year, including Microsoft's 20-year power purchase agreement for the 835-megawatt restart of Three Mile Island, Amazon's acquisition of a nuclear-adjacent Pennsylvania campus for over $650 million and its $500 million investment in X-energy small modular reactors, and Google's order of 500 megawatts from Kairos Power. Data center power demand reached 29.6 gigawatts by late 2025, equivalent to the peak demand of New York state, and the International Energy Agency projects it will rise by 130% by 2030, even as U.S. nuclear output stayed largely flat between 2020 and 2025 and no small modular reactors are under construction in the country.

Microsoft generated $182.94 billion of fiscal 2026 operating cash flow and paid $115.95 billion for property and equipment, leaving $66.99 billion of simple free cash flow that covered its $26.45 billion annual dividend about 2.5 times. After dividends, roughly $40.54 billion remained before repurchases and other claims, and $22.27 billion of buybacks used part of that balance. In the fiscal fourth quarter, management reported $41 billion of capital expenditure including finance leases, compared with $35.8 billion of cash equipment spending, with the separately reported $5.6 billion finance-lease component creating future obligations rather than immediate cash outlays. Holding operating cash flow at $182.94 billion, an additional $20 billion of cash equipment spending would cut simple free cash flow to $46.99 billion and still leave roughly 1.8 times dividend coverage, while an additional $40 billion would leave $26.99 billion, close to the dividend bill before buybacks. At September 30's approximate $3.81 trillion market capitalization, the payout was less than 1% of equity value, and fiscal 2026 simple free cash flow implies approximately 57 times free cash flow. Insider Monkey's hedge fund database showed 273 Microsoft holders in Q2 2026, compared with 282 in Q1, with Fisher Asset Management increasing its share position 3% to 26,611,728.

Oracle announced a commitment to subscribe to a portion of the existing Point Beach Nuclear Plant's electricity generation, an action expected to save Wisconsin utility customers approximately $300 million in fuel costs. The company said the move will help shield more than 1 million Wisconsin utility customers from the plant's rising costs, reduce pressure on household electricity bills, and sustain reliable, carbon-free power for the state's grid. Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said Oracle is absorbing approximately $300 million in rising energy costs to protect Wisconsin ratepayers. The planned commitment builds on Oracle's broader Wisconsin investment through Project Lighthouse, its data center development in Port Washington, which is expected to generate more than $11 billion for the local economy, create more than 4,000 skilled construction jobs over three years, support 1,000 ongoing operations positions, and include full funding of the project's energy costs. Oracle's planned subscription to a portion of the Point Beach purchase power arrangement remains subject to approval by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin.

Zscaler shares have returned +11.8% over the past month, outpacing the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +0.6% change, while the Zacks Security industry gained 14.6% over the same period. The cloud-based information security provider is expected to post earnings of $1.16 per share for the current quarter, a year-over-year change of +20.8%, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate has changed +678.7% over the last 30 days. For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $4.91 indicates a year-over-year change of +16.6%, and for the next fiscal year the consensus estimate of $5.54 indicates a change of +12.9%. Consensus sales estimates stand at $937.61 million for the current quarter, $3.93 billion for the current fiscal year and $4.55 billion for the next fiscal year, indicating year-over-year changes of +19%, +17.2% and +15.8%, respectively. Zscaler reported revenues of $898.18 million in the last reported quarter, a year-over-year change of +24.9%, with EPS of $1.19 versus $0.89 a year ago, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $877.14 million by +2.4% on revenue and by +9.17% on EPS. Zscaler is rated Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and is graded F on the Zacks Value Style Score, indicating it trades at a premium to its peers.

Nebius Group has acquired inference optimization startup Inferize and signed new long-term AI data center capacity deals, moves that aim to boost GPU utilization on its Token Factory platform and deepen its role in global AI infrastructure. The company's recent inclusion in the FTSE All-World Index came alongside fresh analyst coverage and large customer commitments from partners including Meta Platforms and Palantir. Nebius Group's narrative projects $29.7 billion in revenue and $2.1 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 179.9% yearly revenue growth and about a $2.1 billion increase in earnings from $42.4 million today. Some of the most optimistic analysts were already modeling Nebius to reach about US$48.5 billion in revenue and US$1.1 billion in earnings by 2029, well above consensus. The Inferize deal directly targets Nebius's cost base and unit economics by cutting the idle GPU tax on Token Factory, though financing needs and potential dilution remain key risks.

Oracle is repositioning its database business around cloud consumption, raising the question of whether its historically lucrative database franchise can sustain margins as delivery shifts from licenses to usage. Oracle made Exadata Database Service on Exascale Infrastructure generally available on Oracle AI Database@AWS with pay-per-use pricing, and signed an expanded long-term collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services to accelerate customer migrations, with the service now spanning 22 AWS Regions. In first-quarter fiscal 2027 results, multicloud database revenues surged 353% year over year, multicloud customers rose 180%, and Oracle completed its planned expansion across Azure and AWS, reaching 70 multicloud database regions. The shift carries margin trade-offs: software revenues, home to legacy license and support streams, declined 3% to $5.5 billion as customers migrated on-premise workloads to the cloud, while pay-per-use pricing lowers entry price points and partner-hosted deployments add capital intensity. Consolidated profitability has held firm so far, with total revenues up 30% to $19.3 billion, non-GAAP operating income up 31% to $8.2 billion, implying a margin of about 42%, and GAAP operating income up 57% to $6.7 billion, though capital expenditures reached $28.5 billion, leaving free cash flow at negative $5 billion, and Oracle expects to raise about $40 billion through debt and equity in fiscal 2027. For the second quarter, Oracle projects revenue growth of 30-34%, cloud revenue growth of 65-71% and non-GAAP EPS of $1.85-$1.93, while for fiscal 2027 it expects revenues of at least $90 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $8.10, supported by remaining performance obligations of $664 billion.

HENNGE, a company engaged in the cloud security business, announced on the 2nd that its change of market segment to the Prime Market has been approved by the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The change from the current Growth Market will take effect on the settlement dates for the new share issuance and secondary offering, October 20 to 22, which are being conducted to meet listing criteria such as net asset requirements. The new share issuance will be 1.1 million shares, with a secondary offering of 1.38 million shares by founder and president Kazuhiro Ogura and others, and an additional secondary offering via over-allotment is also planned. The maximum amount to be raised is 2.363 billion yen, which is planned to be allocated to the main service, advertising and promotion, and hiring.

Palantir Technologies and Armada have entered a partnership to provide sovereign AI infrastructure, a move that could expand Palantir's addressable market across enterprise and government AI deployments. Under the deal, Palantir named Armada its inaugural Certified Modular Data Center Partner, integrating its Sovereign AI Operating System with Armada's Galleon modular data centers. The offering lets customers run and adapt open-weight AI models on infrastructure they own and control, with deployments targeted for completion in months rather than years. Financial terms, contract value, and expected revenue contribution were not disclosed.

Microsoft and other large US tech firms have formed a new coalition focused on the environmental, energy grid, and local community impacts of AI data center buildouts across the United States. Member companies are preparing shared sustainability and job creation commitments ahead of key US political events. The group is meant to address local pushback on power use, water consumption, and grid stress that has become a real friction point for large AI facilities, and Microsoft is using it to protect its license to keep building the AI infrastructure its cloud and Copilot products rely on. Microsoft, a US software heavyweight with a US$3.8 trillion market cap, faces a key checkpoint in how it breaks out AI driven data center costs and Azure usage under its new FY27 reporting structure, with the first segment numbers due under Agents and Infra. The coalition lines up with an existing risk around heavy AI and cloud investment that raises financial and execution pressure, and coordinated work on permitting, grid access, and environmental rules may help manage that capital intensity without removing the exposure to very large, long dated infrastructure bets.

Palantir Technologies and Armada announced a partnership to deliver sovereign AI on infrastructure manufactured in the United States and allied nations, with Palantir naming Armada its Inaugural Certified Modular Data Center Partner. The joint offering combines Palantir's Sovereign AI Operating System with Armada's infrastructure layer: Galleon modular data centers, the Armada Platform that keeps every deployment under the customer's control, and the Sovereign AI Grid that connects deployments into a resilient distributed system. Palantir will validate and integrate its Sovereign AI Operating System, built on AIP, Ontology, Foundry and Apollo, on Armada's Galleon modular data centers, extending the Palantir Sovereign AI OS Reference Architecture developed with NVIDIA to a ruggedized, modular data center. The Armada Platform distills the latest open-source models, including NVIDIA Nemotron, for fine-tuning and inference on infrastructure the customer owns and controls, without reliance on any external cloud, including any operated by Armada, and can operate fully air-gapped where the mission requires it. Enterprises and governments gain the ability to run open-weight models on compute, data, and physical infrastructure they own and control outright, deployed in months rather than years.

ServiceNow launched Flow by ServiceNow, a conversational AI-native service desk that deploys within a single day without infrastructure requirements, sending its shares up 3.9% in the morning session. According to a company press release, the standalone offering operates directly inside chat applications including Slack and Microsoft Teams, letting enterprise teams automate repetitive workflows using natural language. ServiceNow said new customers can activate the tool with no prior platform prerequisites, while existing AI-tier customers can deploy it through consumption-based pricing. The launch targets the risk that agile, AI-native competitors peel away service-desk volume before companies commit to complex enterprise software, and aims to capture mid-market accounts that previously lacked the resources for a full implementation. After the initial pop, the shares cooled to $135.90, up 1.4% from the previous close, leaving ServiceNow down 7.8% since the start of the year and 28.2% below its 52-week high of $189.26 from October 2025.

Zscaler released its ThreatLabz 2026 Ransomware Report on 1 October 2026, detailing new attack patterns including large-scale AI-driven ransomware operations that automate intrusion, data theft, and victim targeting. Researchers reported a rise in executive-focused data theft and misuse of enterprise tools such as Microsoft Teams to gain access. The report reinforces Zscaler's narrative that AI-driven threats are expanding and that security budgets are shifting toward Zero Trust and data protection, though it does not address whether the company can convert that awareness into larger multi-year contracts and improved net retention without higher sales and operating costs. Investors will be watching how management frames AI ransomware trends at the October 6, 2026 Investor Day and whether disclosures around Z-Flex, Security for AI, and Agentic SecOps show measurable traction in annual recurring revenue and product adoption within Global 2000 accounts.

Nebius has acquired Inferize, an Israel-based AI startup specializing in reducing idle GPU capacity and accelerating the deployment of large models, the neocloud announced today. Inferize's technology targets so-called cold starts, the time models need to load before serving requests, which can leave GPUs idle during a launch as demand spikes and new instances occur. No financial details were disclosed, but Calcalist estimated the deal ranged from $100M to $150M. Nebius plans to add Inferize's experienced engineers to its inference team, with Chief Technology Officer Danila Shtan saying the team's contribution will extend well beyond this first integration. The acquisition follows Nebius's recent purchases of Eigen AI in a deal valued at $643M and Clarifai, whose value was not disclosed, to improve inference and model optimization.

Microsoft shares closed the July-September quarter up 37.5%, the biggest quarterly gain since 1998, adding $1 trillion to the company's market capitalization, according to Bloomberg. The main driver was the late-July earnings report, in which the Cloud business grew at its fastest pace in four years on strong demand for AI services, sending the stock up 16% in a single day, its best daily gain since October 2008, and adding about $450 billion to the company's market value. Among the big technology companies pouring money into AI, including Alphabet, Amazon and Meta Platforms, Microsoft is the only one whose free cash flow has not turned negative on an annualized basis. Meanwhile, of the 72 analysts tracked by Bloomberg, only 3 do not have a buy rating, and none recommend selling, with the average price target implying the stock could rise another 11% over the next 12 months. Adam Wood of Morgan Stanley estimates the stock could deliver a total return of about 20% over the coming year, and Wall Street expects revenue to rise about 18% in fiscal 2027 before accelerating to about 21% in fiscal 2029. Earnings per share are expected to rise about 11% in the current fiscal year, slowing from nearly 32% in fiscal 2026, before reaccelerating to nearly 19% in fiscal 2028 and about 21% in fiscal 2029.

Microsoft Corp. added $1 trillion to its market capitalization as its shares jumped 37.5% from July through September, the stock's best quarterly showing since 1998. The surge followed the company's late-July earnings, which showed the fastest cloud growth in four years on strong AI demand and sent the stock up 16% the next day, its best session since October 2008, adding $450 billion in market value. Microsoft was the fifth-best performer in the Nasdaq 100 Index, which gained just 0.4% over the same three months, and it is the only one of the big AI spenders, alongside Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc., that hasn't seen free cash flow turn negative on an annual basis. Of 72 analysts tracked by Bloomberg who follow the company, only three don't have buy ratings and none rates it a sell, with the average price target implying roughly 11% upside over the next 12 months; Stifel upgraded the stock to buy last week, and Morgan Stanley's Adam Wood sees a total return of roughly 20% over the next year. Revenue is expected to rise 18% in Microsoft's 2027 fiscal year, roughly in line with fiscal 2026, and Wall Street expects that figure to hit 21% in fiscal 2029, while earnings per share is projected to climb nearly 19% in fiscal 2028 and 21% in fiscal 2029. The shares trade at almost 25 times estimated earnings over the next 12 months, a discount to their 10-year average of 27, though the stock's 6.1% gain this year still trails the Nasdaq 100's 20% surge.

Oracle and STACK Infrastructure said Wednesday that no critical infrastructure was damaged at the Project Jupiter campus after flooding reached the site in southern New Mexico, and the project remains on its planned schedule. The two companies said they are working with partners and insurers to address site impacts. Oracle shares slipped about 5% last Thursday after news that the company sent a force majeure notice tied to its New Mexico data center project to protect itself from higher expenses. Project Jupiter is designed to have 2.45 gigawatts of capacity and is part of the broader Stargate artificial intelligence infrastructure effort involving Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank, with about 20 banks providing an $18B loan to help finance the data center campus. The facility is expected to use Bloom Energy fuel cells.

Tencent, China's internet giant, has signed a five-year agreement to lease about 100,000 advanced AI chips from Oracle for $7 billion, in a push to accelerate its AI development and sharpen its competitive edge. The Financial Times reported on October 1, citing two sources, that Tencent will lease the chips from several Oracle data centers in Southeast Asia. The deal is Tencent's largest overseas leasing contract and gives the company access to roughly 100,000 advanced chips that are not sold in China. Tencent must pay about 30% of the deal's value upfront, and the lease costs weighed on Tencent's free cash flow in its second-quarter results. Under U.S. regulations, Chinese technology companies cannot buy advanced AI chips directly, but they can still lease such chips from abroad, giving them access to advanced Nvidia chips that are generally unavailable in China. Meanwhile, Tencent's latest Hunyuan model has improved markedly in recent months and is seen as narrowing the gap with leading Chinese AI models such as DeepSeek and Alibaba Group Holding.

Progress Software guided fourth-quarter revenue to between $297 million and $305 million and earnings per share to between $1.24 and $1.33, while raising its full-year 2026 outlook to revenue of $1.044 billion to $1.052 billion and earnings per share of $6.15 to $6.23. The guidance follows the company's $400 million acquisition of Domo, which closed after the quarter ended and is not included in third-quarter results. For the third quarter, Progress reported annual recurring revenue of approximately $873 million, up over 1% in constant currency, revenue of $246 million, an operating margin of 43%, and earnings per share of $1.69, up 13% and above the high end of guidance. Management said it expects Domo's steady-state revenue to stabilize in the range of $280 million to $290 million, with planned churn in the seat-based business and a reduced emphasis on Domo's services business, and that once fully integrated by the end of fiscal 2027, Domo should annually add well over $100 million of EBITDA. Progress drew $390 million on its revolver to fund the transaction, and the incremental interest expense in 2027 is expected to be approximately $21 million, while Domo's integration is expected to compress Progress' overall 2027 operating margin by 100 to 200 basis points as synergies ramp.

Progress Software reported quarterly earnings of $1.69 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.49 per share and marking a positive earnings surprise of 13.42%. The figure compares to earnings of $1.5 per share a year ago, adjusted for non-recurring items, and the company has now surpassed consensus EPS estimates in each of the last four quarters. Revenue for the quarter ended August 2026 came in at $246.01 million, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 0.47% and down from year-ago revenues of $249.79 million, with the company having topped consensus revenue estimates two times over the last four quarters. Ahead of the release, the estimate revisions trend was mixed, translating into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), and the current consensus stands at $1.41 per share on $251.36 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $6.16 per share on $994.66 million in revenues for the current fiscal year. Progress Software shares have lost about 8.2% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 12.1%, while industry peer Pegasystems has yet to report results for the quarter ended September 2026, with expectations of $0.45 per share in earnings and $442.6 million in revenues.

Oracle unveiled Fusion Claw, a governed agentic execution runtime that powers 25 new AI-driven enterprise applications along with new financial-crime compliance tools designed to automate complex workflows while preserving tight governance and auditability. The launch, disclosed in late September 2026, highlights Oracle's push to blend AI reasoning with deterministic enterprise computation, aiming to make "systems of outcomes" a core layer of its business software rather than just adding AI features at the edges. Fusion Claw is Oracle's attempt to turn AI into governed, auditable systems embedded in core ERP, finance, HR, and compliance workflows, strengthening the product story behind its aggressive pivot into AI infrastructure and agentic applications. Near-term catalysts remain OCI growth, conversion of Oracle's very large cloud backlog, and evidence that AI-driven Fusion apps can deepen wallet share, though the stock's sharp pullback and recent concerns around Project Jupiter and Wisconsin power delays have made funding, execution, and balance sheet risk more central to the narrative. Twenty Simply Wall St Community members see Oracle's fair value anywhere from about US$125 to nearly US$390, a spread that sits alongside mounting concerns about AI data center delays and funding.

Tenable reported second-quarter revenue of $268.5 million, up 8.6% year on year and 1.4% above analysts' expectations, in what the company called a strong quarter. Co-CEO Steve Vintz credited continued momentum in Tenable One, and the results also included an impressive beat of analysts' adjusted operating income estimates and next-quarter EPS guidance exceeding expectations. Tenable's stock is up 12.2% since reporting and trades at $35.31. Across the 9 cybersecurity stocks tracked in the group, revenues beat consensus estimates by 1.7% and next-quarter revenue guidance came in 0.9% above expectations, with share prices up 15.8% on average since the latest earnings results. Among peers, Qualys posted the best quarter with revenue of $182.2 million, up 11% and 2% above expectations, while SentinelOne delivered the weakest performance against estimates despite revenue of $292 million, up 20.6%.

Morgan Stanley sees roughly 50% upside in Oracle shares but is not recommending investors buy them, with analyst Sanjit Singh maintaining an Equal Weight rating and a $210 price target. The central concern is what Oracle gets back from its massive AI infrastructure spending, even as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue rose 121% year over year in the fiscal first quarter. Singh said he wants to see further gross margin stabilization, though he noted promising signs including greater OCI capacity, higher renewal pricing and increasing profits, and he liked the company's reaffirmed annual capital expenditure projection of $90 billion to $95 billion. Oracle's financial analyst day on Oct. 28 is the next key driver, which Singh called a good starting point to see whether Oracle can clarify infrastructure deployment, profitability and application patterns. By contrast, Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore keeps an Overweight rating on Broadcom with a $505 price target, believing it will eventually capture more than 80% of serviceable markets with its custom-chip projects, even though he thinks 2027 AI revenue forecasts are too high.

Nvidia authorized an additional $150 billion for its share buyback program, bringing the total authorization to $235 billion, and the graphics chip designer's shares rose 2.7% on Monday. Pacific Biosciences of California climbed 5.8% after genomics provider Sampled announced a five-year contract worth up to $27.1 million from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to support research using PacBio Revio sequencing systems. Palo Alto Networks gained 5.1% after BTIG raised its price target on the cybersecurity platform provider to $425 from $404 and reiterated a Buy rating following discussions with management. Teleflex rose 4.5% after BofA Securities upgraded the medical technology company's stock from Neutral to Buy and raised its price target.

Jefferies analyst Brent Thill reiterated a Buy rating and $575 price target on Microsoft, calling the company's revamped Copilot incrementally positive and supportive of the firm's Microsoft 365 thesis. The biggest change, according to Jefferies, is that Microsoft is pushing Copilot beyond simple AI assistance toward software that can perform longer, more complex work, with new features such as Cowork, Code and Autopilot potentially increasing both the number of tasks Copilot handles and how frequently customers pay for AI usage. Thill said Cowork bridges AI assistance to delegated, end-to-end work, while Autopilot extends this into proactive, persistent and recurring execution, a shift Jefferies believes could make AI consumption more tangible across Microsoft 365. Thill also compared the new Copilot app with Meta Platforms' Muse, arguing Microsoft may hold an important enterprise advantage because its AI tools are grounded in proprietary corporate data and workflows, and because it controls a much broader enterprise technology stack spanning productivity, collaboration, cloud infrastructure, data, identity, security, governance and compliance. Jefferies cautioned that better AI capabilities do not automatically guarantee stronger consumption, as enterprises closely monitor AI budgets and increasingly demand clear returns before expanding spending, meaning adoption could remain gradual; the key metric for investors will be whether these new agentic capabilities move from demonstrations into recurring production workflows.

NetApp and Oracle announced a new fully managed storage service that brings enterprise-grade NetApp storage natively to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The service, called Oracle Cloud Infrastructure NetApp Storage Service, will bring NetApp ONTAP data management capabilities natively to OCI to help organizations simplify migration and management of critical AI and enterprise workloads in the cloud. It is designed to help enterprises migrate, run, protect, and modernize databases, enterprise applications, virtualized environments, EDA/HPC, regulated applications, and AI data pipelines while preserving familiar storage operations, and customers can manage it through the OCI Console and SDKs, ONTAP APIs, and familiar operational workflows. Pravjit Tiwana, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Storage and Services at NetApp, said customers want the flexibility to move AI and enterprise workloads to the cloud without giving up operational simplicity, data management, and reliability, while Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Senior Vice President of Partnerships at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said enterprises shouldn't have to rebuild their data infrastructure to move to the cloud. Alvaro Celis, Senior Vice President, Chief Commercial, Partner and Ecosystem Officer at NetApp, said the partnership combines OCI's scale and performance with NetApp's enterprise data capabilities to help customers run mission-critical workloads, especially in regulated industries. OCI NetApp Storage Service is planned for general availability within the next 12 months.