Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) extended its losing streak to five consecutive sessions on Tuesday, with shares falling approximately 16.5% over that period despite persistent bullish sentiment among retail traders.
The prolonged decline has been driven by renewed concerns surrounding Oracle’s aggressive artificial intelligence infrastructure spending, its growing financing requirements, and its significant exposure to OpenAI as a key customer.
The selloff has also coincided with a fresh round of layoffs at Oracle, with employees posting termination notices this week on social media platforms including LinkedIn, Reddit, and Blind.
Some affected employees reported being notified of their terminations early Tuesday morning, though the full scale of the current cuts remains unclear.
The latest reductions follow Oracle’s elimination of approximately 21,000 jobs, representing roughly 13% of its total workforce, during its last fiscal year, which ended in May 2026.
Despite the sustained pressure on the stock, retail sentiment on Stocktwits remained “extremely bullish” for much of the past week, with traders actively watching for catalysts that could reverse the recent slide.
One closely watched opportunity is a potential sovereign cloud contract with Japan, with The Financial Times having reported in July that Oracle was leading Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google in the competition to provide air-gapped cloud infrastructure for sensitive Japanese government data.
Japan has not yet made a final decision on the contract, but traders are betting that a confirmed deal could provide a significant boost to Oracle’s cloud business narrative.
Sentiment received an additional lift from a fresh Financial Times report indicating that OpenAI is in early discussions with investors regarding a new private funding round at a valuation of approximately $1.2 trillion.
That figure would represent a roughly 41% increase from the $850 billion valuation assigned to OpenAI during its March funding round, signaling strong continued investor appetite for AI-related assets.
The potential fundraise carries direct implications for Oracle, which has been constructing massive data center capacity tied to OpenAI and other AI customers, with first-quarter capital expenditures surging to $28.5 billion and fiscal 2027 capex guidance reaching as high as $95 billion.
On Stocktwits, one trader posted “$ORCL get ready for news confirming Japan selecting ORCL cloud for sovereign cloud contract,” reflecting the optimism building around a potential announcement.
Traders also reacted to Chairman Larry Ellison’s decision to cancel a planned sale of up to $7.5 billion worth of Oracle stock, with one trader offering a skeptical take on the move.
“He wants to sell 50M shares into the market. But he suddenly realized that the shares that were already depressed would fall even further if he did. So he cancelled the sale… But cancelling the trade doesn’t mean he’s changed his mind. He’s just gotta do a better job at the PR,” that trader wrote.
On the subject of OpenAI’s trajectory toward public markets, one trader wrote, “OpenAI said last year they will come to market in fall 2026. Oracle shot to 250, but then they delayed and dropped back down. You will see this at 280 next year if Altman brings it to market,” though OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated this week that a listing is unlikely before 2027.
