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Oracle slides on report that data center partner Blue Owl won’t fund $10 billion Michigan facility; company says project is on track without Blue Owl

Oracle shares declined early Wednesday after the Financial Times reported that Blue Owl Capital, the largest funder of Oracle’s data center investment push, will not finance a 1-gigawatt Oracle data center planned for Saline Township, Michigan. The pink-paged periodical reports:

“Blue Owl had been in discussions with lenders and Oracle about investing in the planned 1 gigawatt data centre being built to serve OpenAI in Saline Township, Michigan.

But the agreement will not go forward after negotiations stalled, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The private capital group has been the primary backer for Oracle’s largest data centre projects in the US, investing its own money and raising billions more in debt to build the facilities. Blue Owl typically sets up a special purpose vehicle, which owns the data centre and leases it to Oracle.”

For its part, Oracle told Bloomberg on Wednesday morning that negotiations for a data center project in Michigan are “on schedule” and don’t include Blue Owl.

While not horrible, Wednesday’s drop puts Oracle down 15% so far this week, as the shares continue to be clobbered by rapidly shifting investor sentiment toward lofty AI investment plans.

Oracle is down roughly 45% from the all-time high it hit on September 10, in a plunge that has destroyed more than $400 billion in value. Yowza.

“Blue Owl had been in discussions with lenders and Oracle about investing in the planned 1 gigawatt data centre being built to serve OpenAI in Saline Township, Michigan.

But the agreement will not go forward after negotiations stalled, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The private capital group has been the primary backer for Oracle’s largest data centre projects in the US, investing its own money and raising billions more in debt to build the facilities. Blue Owl typically sets up a special purpose vehicle, which owns the data centre and leases it to Oracle.”

For its part, Oracle told Bloomberg on Wednesday morning that negotiations for a data center project in Michigan are “on schedule” and don’t include Blue Owl.

While not horrible, Wednesday’s drop puts Oracle down 15% so far this week, as the shares continue to be clobbered by rapidly shifting investor sentiment toward lofty AI investment plans.

Oracle is down roughly 45% from the all-time high it hit on September 10, in a plunge that has destroyed more than $400 billion in value. Yowza.

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Sandisk and Micron slip as Samsung rushes new product into production

Sandisk and Micron, which have boomed along with prices for the memory chips needed for the AI data center build-out, are limping behind the broader market Monday after a weekend report that South Korean chip giant Samsung is beginning “mass production” of its latest memory product, HBM4, slightly earlier than expected.

US memory chip maker Micron also makes HBM (high-bandwidth memory), which is essentially a large memory product designed for AI applications.

Sandisk doesn’t make HBM. But it is developing a kind of high-bandwidth flash NAND memory product that is intended to function as an HBM option for AI data centers.

More broadly, signs that Asian production giants are responding to high prices by ramping up supply means that the nosebleed pricing of memory chips that quintupled Sandisk’s profit over the last year might not last forever.

US memory chip maker Micron also makes HBM (high-bandwidth memory), which is essentially a large memory product designed for AI applications.

Sandisk doesn’t make HBM. But it is developing a kind of high-bandwidth flash NAND memory product that is intended to function as an HBM option for AI data centers.

More broadly, signs that Asian production giants are responding to high prices by ramping up supply means that the nosebleed pricing of memory chips that quintupled Sandisk’s profit over the last year might not last forever.

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Oracle rises as DA Davidson gives it a “buy” rating because of OpenAI positivity

Oracle rose after receiving an upgrade to start the week. Analysts at DA Davidson bumped up their view on the stock from “neutral” to “buy” and kept their $180 price target on the shares. That’s about 27% higher than Friday’s close.

Their shift isn’t so much about Oracle but about OpenAI, which Davidson folks now think is increasingly likely to be able to make good on billions of dollars’ worth of planned spending on computing power at Oracle and other hyperscalers. They wrote:

We are now more positive on OpenAI, based on changes in strategy, new frontier models, the pressure on Google’s competitors from its recent ascent, and progress on its fundraising efforts. Most importantly, we believe OpenAI already has as much as $40B of cash on hand and may be raising as much as another $100B by the end of the quarter, which should help pay for the data centers Oracle is building for OpenAI. Since the market is currently assigning the OpenAI relationship a negative value, we believe the fundraise will serve as a catalyst for outperformance.

For OpenAI’s part, CEO Sam Altman just told employees that the company was “back to exceeding 10% monthly growth,” according to CNBC reporting.

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Roblox rises following upgrade and price target hike from Roth Capital as growth in older players boosts optimism

Shares of Roblox are up in early trading on Monday following a price target hike and an upgrade from “neutral” to “buy” from Roth Capital.

Roth bumped its price target up from $78 to $84, with analyst Eric Handler citing the company’s “sustainable virtuous circle where continuously improving creator/development tools are producing higher quality games, which enhances the user experience, and drives higher engagement.”

Handler also noted Roblox’s success in growing its 18-plus player base, which increased 50% last year and, per Roth, “monetized 40% higher than under-18-users.”

The platform surged after reporting its fourth-quarter earnings last week, with stronger-than-expected full-year bookings guidance. Still, the stock remains below levels in January, before the debut of Google’s AI interactive worlds generator, Project Genie.

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