Squawk on the Street · Nov 10, 2026
With Hilary Maxson, CFO of Oracle
Oracle now quotes $16 billion a year in revenue per gigawatt of AI data-center capacity, up from $10 billion. Hilary Maxson, CFO of Oracle, told David Faber on CNBC's Squawk on the Street that the increase comes mainly from inflation in the cost of memory, which Oracle's AI contracts pass through to customers.
Investors have read rising data-center costs and the midterm backlash against new sites as threats to Oracle's AI build-out. Hilary's answer is that the contracts protect the margin and that the construction is already underway.
"We have five large data centers under construction already in the U.S. One of those is nearing completion... it's not like anti-data-center sentiment just arose last Tuesday. This is an environment we've been dealing with for at least the past 8 to 10 months." — Hilary Maxson
As CFO, Hilary is the executive responsible for funding that build-out, and she set out when Oracle expects it to turn cash-flow positive.
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Here are the 3 numbers that matter.
Key Takeaways
Oracle's revenue per gigawatt rose from $10B to $16B a year, mainly on memory costs
Cost-plus pricing in its big AI contracts fixes the gross-margin percentage
Oracle is adding $158B-plus in backlog over the next 4 years and is fully funded
Oracle expects to be cash-flow positive in the second half of fiscal 2028, with $30B-plus of free cash flow in fiscal 2029
5 large US data centers are already under construction, spanning 2026 through 2029
1. $10B to $16B per Gigawatt
Oracle's quoted economics have jumped from $10 billion to $16 billion a year in revenue per gigawatt. Hilary attributed the increase "primarily" to rising memory costs, both for memory built into chipsets and for memory Oracle buys and secures directly.
Hilary Maxson says cost-plus contracts let Oracle pass memory inflation through
"I think it's primarily cost inflation. So we do have inflation, particularly in the cost of memory... we have cost-plus pricing in our big AI contracts, and then I also think that the market has strengthened in terms of overall pricing for AI compute." — Hilary Maxson
Under cost-plus pricing, Oracle's gross-margin percentage stays fixed, so the dollar margin rises as costs climb. She added that prices for AI computing have also strengthened across the market.
