Finance
Oracle announces Equity and Debt Financing Plan for Calendar Year 2026
AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) today announced its full calendar year 2026 plan to fund the expansion of its rapidly growing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure business. Oracle is raising money in order to build additional capacity to meet the contracted demand from our largest Oracle Cloud Infrastructure customers, including AMD, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, TikTok, xAI and others.
Oracle expects to raise $45 to $50 billion of gross cash proceeds during the 2026 calendar year. The company plans to achieve its funding objective by using a balanced combination of debt and equity financing to maintain a solid investment-grade balance sheet.
On the equity side, Oracle plans to raise approximately half of its 2026 funding through a combination of equity-linked and common equity issuances. This is expected to include an initial issuance of mandatory convertible preferred securities, representing a modest portion of the overall equity funding, as well as a newly authorized at-the-market equity program of up to $20 billion. The company plans to issue equity from the at-the-market program flexibly over time at prevailing market prices, based on market conditions and capital needs.
On the debt side, Oracle intends to complete a single, one-time issuance of investment-grade senior unsecured bonds early in 2026 to cover the other half of the company’s planned funding for the year. Oracle does not expect to issue additional bonds during calendar year 2026 beyond this transaction.
This funding plan reflects Oracle’s commitment to maintaining an investment-grade rating, prudent capital allocation, balance sheet strength, and transparency with investors as the company continues to expand its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure business. These transactions have been approved by the Oracle Board of Directors.
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC will be leading the senior unsecured bond offering, and Citigroup will be leading the at-the-market issuance and mandatory convertible preferred equity offering.
About Oracle
Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud.
Trademarks
Oracle, Java, MySQL, and NetSuite are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. NetSuite was the first cloud company—ushering in the new era of cloud computing.
“Safe Harbor” Statement: This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding Oracle’s expected funding needs, anticipated credit ratings, capital markets transactions, and financing strategy. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied due to various risks and uncertainties. Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ are: changes in the timing of any customer’s purchases or ability to fund its commitments; delays or development and/or operational problems with the construction of implementation of any of the data centers; and new or different commercial opportunities that cause the Company to reevaluate its near-term capital needs. Oracle undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.
Oracle Corporation may file a registration statement (including a prospectus) with the SEC for the offering to which this communication relates. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus in that registration statement and other documents Oracle Corporation has filed with the SEC for more complete information about Oracle Corporation and this offering. You may get these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Alternatively, you may obtain a copy by visiting www.oracle.com/investor, calling our Investor Relations Department at 1-650-506-4073, writing to Investor Relations Department, Oracle Corporation, 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood City, California 94065 or sending an email to [email protected].
SOURCE Oracle
Finance
Low-income Chinese girl aces gaokao, inspires live-streamers offering help
A girl from a disadvantaged rural family in central China topped this year’s gaokao, attracting numerous live-streamers eager to finance her education, which she declined.
The home of 18-year-old secondary school graduate Han Yaping in a Henan province village was recently bustling with live-streamers.
This attention came after Han achieved an impressive score of 699 out of 750 in the gaokao, China’s national college entrance exam.
She has received offers from China’s two leading universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University.
Han’s accomplishment is particularly remarkable given her family’s impoverished circumstances.
Her mother suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory arthritis affecting the spine, preventing her from working. Her father, who earns a living through farming and odd jobs, serves as the family’s sole provider. Han also has a younger sister.
Finance
UK financial regulator publishes landmark AI review
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a landmark review on Monday that proposes recommendations to regulate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the financial decisions made by consumers.
The review, titled the Mills Review, anticipates that both consumers and firms will start delegating “more financial decision-making to AI systems,” including for agreements, initiating transactions, and executing decisions “within agreed parameters.” One of the key findings of the review outlined that while AI can help bridge advice gaps and “support growth,” there remain risks “associated with fraud, cyber security, and consumer harm.” Conducting the review, Sheldon Mills highlighted that “AI can also amplify risks: bias, discrimination, exclusion, opaque decision-making (particularly when multiple AI models interact), misleading or hallucinatory advice and erosion of consumer trust.”
The review stated that presently, one in five adults in the UK are “already open to AI making decisions for them,” particularly when decisions feel “complex or high stakes.” It found that roughly 26 percent of the population “trust general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for financial advice” with little awareness that such platforms provide no “formal routes to recourse” or protections.
Overall, the Mills Review identified four areas that it anticipates will be impacted by AI in the financial sector: “the transformation of firms,” “new consumer journeys,” “a reshaped competition landscape,” and “amplified financial crime and cyber risk.” The FCA projected the shift in how consumers and firms consult AI to take place by 2030.
The Mills Review put forth seven “priority” recommendations to be considered by the FCA Board. It recommended that any transitions to autonomous AI models be monitored and that regulatory frameworks and perimeters be adapted and secured. The review called for the strengthening of “system-wide coordination and oversight,” the scaling up of the FCA’s AI Lab to enable it to support AI models and innovation for agentic finance, and an “AI-enabled agentic supervisory model” to be built and adopted. Finally, it recommended that a trusted “public-interest AI-enabled financial capability service” be developed.
The FCA announced, in the press release, that it will launch an AI “good and poor practice publication” in late 2026.
Finance
Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approves audit contract, new finance director position
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – The Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approved a one-year audit contract capped at $131,750 plus $225 per hour during a virtual meeting Monday, along with a new finance director job description.
The contract is with Mauldin & Jenkins Certified Public Accountants, an Atlanta-based firm, and covers the 2025-26 fiscal year and the restatement of the 2024-25 fiscal year and ancillary services through FY 2029-2030. The work is set to be completed by Nov. 15.
The board approved the contract in a 5-0 vote.
Audit contract details
Interim Chief Financial Officer Kyna Koch said the cost is already accounted for in the district’s budget.
“And is actually less than we expected given our current situation — we were thrilled with the bid,” Koch said.
Koch said she believes this is Mauldin & Jenkins’ first school district audit in Kentucky, but that the firm works with school districts of more than 100,000 students throughout the Southeast.
“Quite frankly when I spoke to the folks at KDE they were thrilled because we’re running kind of short of auditors who want to do school district audits — so all around I think this was a win-win for everyone,” Koch said.
New finance director position
The board also approved a new job description for the position of Director of Finance. Acting Superintendent Dr. Bill Bradford said the title will replace two associate director positions.
“Which will not only save the school district money but it’s also going to streamline our work and align internal controls to make room for a more efficient unit,” Bradford said.
Koch said the position will be posted as soon as possible following the board’s approval.
Closed session
The board went into closed session for more than an hour to discuss pending investigations that could lead to employee discipline. When the board returned, it took no action and adjourned the meeting.
Copyright 2026 WKYT. All rights reserved.
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