New York, Feb 14, 2026, 11:21 EST — Market closed.
- Oracle shares closed higher on Friday ahead of a holiday-shortened U.S. trading week
- A new U.S. Air Force cloud task order put government work back in view
- Oracle executives are also talking up a wider cloud footprint in India
Oracle (ORCL) shares rose 2.34% on Friday to close at $160.14, after swinging between $155.29 and $162.30. About 18.60 million shares traded, according to Investing.com data. (Investing)
The move keeps Oracle’s stock in focus going into next week, when investors will look for more signs that cloud demand is turning into real, sticky workloads. The company has leaned into cloud infrastructure as customers look for cheaper compute and more capacity for AI-heavy use.
U.S. markets are closed on Monday for Presidents Day, and trading resumes Tuesday. That break can leave a thin week where a single contract headline, or a cold patch in sentiment, moves prices more than usual. (NASDAQ Trader)
Oracle said the U.S. Department of the Air Force awarded it an $88 million firm-fixed price task order to provide Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for the service’s Cloud One program, running through Dec. 7, 2028, and including Oracle AI Database 26ai. “With this latest contract award, defense customers can confidently advance their most critical missions,” Oracle executive vice president Kim Lynch said. A firm-fixed price sets the fee up front; a task order is a specific slice of work under a broader contract. (Oracle)
Cloud One is the Air Force’s multi-vendor cloud program, and the award follows a roughly $581 million deal the service finalized with Amazon Web Services in late January, Washington Technology reported. The Air Force has also brought in contractors for systems architecture and application modernization work tied to the same cloud effort. (Washington Technology)
In India, Oracle is widening its cloud footprint as customers move from AI pilots to production, The Economic Times reported. Oracle runs two OCI regions in India and has multi-cloud deployments — using more than one provider — inside Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, the report said. Chris Chelliah, a senior vice president at Oracle Japan and Asia Pacific, said Oracle expects to launch services inside AWS by April, taking its cloud presence in India to five regions. “I think 2026 will be the year when projects really scale,” he said, pointing to “inference” — running trained models — as the next wave of enterprise adoption. (The Economic Times)
Still, government cloud contracts often ramp slowly, and revenue typically arrives over years, not weeks. If procurement drags, or budgets tighten, a Friday bounce can fade fast.
Markets reopen on Tuesday, with traders watching for any follow-on Cloud One work and more clarity on Oracle’s broader cloud pipeline. Investors are also waiting for Oracle’s next quarterly update, which the company says will be announced in mid-March. (Oracle)
