Marks vs. Prices, Technology and the capital cycle
Reuters puts OpenAI at almost half of Oracle's $638BN backlog, a share no filing gives
By Jeff Baehr, Founder & CEO, Praxis Rock Advisors
In brief
Oracle's 10-K says no customer reached 10% of revenue, but Reuters reports OpenAI at almost half of its $638BN backlog, close to $300BN. Banks quoted $18BN of Project Jupiter loans at 89 to 91 cents as the syndication stalled. Data center lenders cannot size that concentration from Oracle's filings.
Oracle's 10-K says no customer hit 10% of revenue. Reuters says OpenAI was almost half its backlog.
Data center lenders are standing in the gap between those two sentences.
The numbers measure different things. The 10% test runs on revenue, and backlog (remaining performance obligations, in Oracle's filings) is contracted revenue not yet recognized. Reuters set that share against Oracle's $638 billion May backlog. By my math, that's close to $300 billion of contracted revenue from one customer.
Oracle has named OpenAI among its largest cloud customers in an SEC filing, and its 10-K warns that some cloud offerings are "more concentrated among a number of large customers," but neither the annual report nor the latest 10-Q mentions OpenAI, and no filing gives its share.
Source: see Sources below. As of October 2026.
| Figure | What it shows |
|---|---|
| $18BN | Project Jupiter loans held by banks |
| 89 to 91 cents | Where banks quoted the loans as the syndication stalled |
| $638BN | Oracle's remaining performance obligations at May 31 |
| 10% | The revenue test no single customer reached, per the 10-K |
Banks quoted $18 billion of loans on Project Jupiter, a New Mexico data center Oracle leases as part of its agreement with OpenAI, at 89 to 91 cents in September as the syndication stalled, the FT reported.
Days later, Oracle sent the developer a force majeure notice over potential power delays, Reuters reported. In Michigan, PIMCO funds bought about $10 billion of $14 billion in bonds for an Oracle campus, Bloomberg reported in April.
None of the reasons Reuters relayed from the FT for the Jupiter loans' troubles (Oracle's rising borrowing, local opposition, a blocked gas pipeline) was OpenAI. That's the problem. Oracle's largest customer concentration is one no lender can size from Oracle's filings.
The market is repricing Oracle anyway. Its credit default swaps reached about 257 basis points on Oct. 8, the highest since at least 2009 and up from 182 in mid-September, as default protection on AI-linked names from Nvidia to Oracle hit records, IFR reported.
In February, Fitch called Oracle's risk manageable in the near term because its capex is tied to multi-year contracts with well-backed AI customers, naming OpenAI, xAI, Meta and Nvidia. That works if the contracts are spread out. Almost half with one customer isn't spread out.
The same test applies beyond Oracle. Morgan Stanley estimates, charted by the Bank of England, have private credit funding about $700 billion of global data center investment from 2026 to 2028, across every tenant.
If you hold data center debt, name the tenant's biggest customer and its share of the tenant's backlog. If that number came from a headline instead of a filing, you're underwriting a news story.
The research behind this
- Oracle, Form 10-K, fiscal 2026, June 2026.
- Oracle, Form 10-Q, quarter ended Aug. 31, 2026, September 2026.
- Reuters, Oracle goes on a high-stakes ratings gamble with its strategy, August 4, 2026.
- Reuters, Oracle's $18 billion data center debt under pressure, FT reports, September 18, 2026.
- Reuters, Oracle cites force majeure for a data center, September 24, 2026.
- IFR, Hyperscaler and chipmaker CDS widen to record levels, October 9, 2026.
- Fitch Ratings, Fitch rates Oracle senior notes offering, February 2, 2026.
- Reuters, Related Digital secures financing for Oracle data center in Michigan, April 24, 2026.
- Bank of England, Financial Stability Report, July 2026, July 2026.