Oracle (ORCL 35.96%) lit up after-hours trading on Sept. 9 after reporting a massive jump in its booked work tied to cloud infrastructure. The database giant turned cloud platform is benefiting directly from the artificial intelligence (AI) buildout, but in a way that provides unusually clear visibility into future revenue.

Nvidia (NVDA 3.91%) is still the face of AI infrastructure and continues to post eye-popping results. But the paths these two companies are on are different. Oracle’s growth is increasingly anchored by multiyear contracts that companies recognize as revenue over time, while Nvidia’s revenue depends on hardware shipments that ebb and flow with product transitions and customer ordering patterns. That’s why, from here, Oracle looks like the better buy.

Image source: Getty Images.

Oracle’s cloud business is exploding

Start with the backlog. Oracle’s remaining performance obligations (RPO) — a leading indicator of revenue tied to signed contracts–surged to $455 billion (yes, you read that figure correctly) in the quarter ended Aug. 31, up 359% year over year. Management said it signed “four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers” in the quarter, and expects RPO to exceed half a trillion dollars in the coming months. Cloud revenue rose 28% and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) revenue jumped 55%.

This isn’t a one-off headline. RPO was $138 billion just last quarter, so the step-function increase reflects a wave of very large, multi-year deals landing at once. That’s the kind of demand AI leaders want to see — and it turns into revenue progressively over time, which typically smooths results compared to one-time hardware shipments.

Oracle also raised the bar on its cloud infrastructure outlook. CEO Safra Catz previewed a plan to grow Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) revenue 77% this fiscal year to $18 billion and then scale it to $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion, and $144 billion over the subsequent four years–much of which is already embedded in RPO. The company highlighted blistering multicloud momentum as well: “MultiCloud database revenue from Amazon, Google and Microsoft grew at the incredible rate of 1,529% in Q1,” with 37 more data centers slated for delivery to hyperscaler partners (71 in total). Oracle even declared another $0.50 quarterly dividend, underscoring confidence and cash generation.

Nvidia’s AI engine is phenomenal, but more cyclical

Nvidia‘s latest results remain exceptional: In the quarter ended July 27, revenue rose 56% year over year to $46.7 billion, with data-center revenue up 56% to $41.1 billion. Blackwell revenue grew 17% sequentially, and the company guided next quarter’s revenue to about $54 billion. None of that is weak.

But look under the hood, and you see dynamics that can swing. Sequential compute revenue dipped 1% because of a $4.0 billion reduction in sales of H20 products, and there were no H20 sales to China in the quarter. Inventory climbed to $15.0 billion to support the next product ramp, and purchase commitments reached $45.8 billion as Nvidia lines up capacity for future cycles. This is what a world-class hardware franchise looks like — powerful, but still subject to product transitions, export rules, and hyperscaler ordering patterns.

That’s the key contrast. Oracle’s growth is increasingly contract-based and recognized over time, with RPO providing a multi-year line of sight. Nvidia’s growth, while extraordinary, is inherently linked to hardware cycles and customers’ deployment timing. For portfolio construction, those differences matter.

Pulling it together, Oracle offers investors a clearer runway tied to contractual obligations, accelerating multicloud distribution with the biggest platforms in tech, and a growing dividend — all while still being earlier in its AI cloud build-out than Nvidia is in AI silicon. Nvidia will likely continue to compound value, but the path can be choppier as architectures evolve and regional rules shift. For investors choosing one AI leader to buy today, Oracle’s visibility and mix of growth and durability make it the better buy.