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Compute & physical

Cloud backlog (remaining performance obligations)

concentrating80/95 confidence, good evidence, some ambiguitygrade Aleading

1What this measures

Remaining performance obligations reported by Oracle, Microsoft and CoreWeave at each quarter end, from SEC filings. Contracted, not yet recognised revenue; the headline series is Oracle's.

Why it matters. RPO is the forward view of whether compute demand is contracted ahead of revenue. Its growth is the clearest filed evidence of capex-ahead-of-revenue, and of how much of it is one customer.

Proxy types
capital_flow, market_structure
Unit
USD
Cadence
quarterly

2How we track this

  • series sec.orcl.rpo.q
  • series sec.msft.rpo.q
  • series sec.crwv.rpo.q

Direction over 4 periods, dead-band $10.0B; higher = concentrating.

Four quarters; moves under $10B are noise at this scale. Growing backlog concentrates future cloud revenue in a few contracts.

Applied to sec.orcl.rpo.q.

3Tracker interpretation

Backlog is growing far faster than recognised revenue; a large share is a handful of AI-lab contracts, which is the circular-financing question in filed form.

4Evidence

Direction over the last 4 periods; the band is ±$10.0B around the window's first point. Higher reads concentrating.

Latest point
$638Bas of 2026-05-31
orcl
Value the bands apply to
$638Bas of 2026-05-31

73 observations. Hollow points are disputed (see counterevidence). Every point links to its observation.

5Status and reasoning

concentratingsince 2026-09-10 · claude-initial-seed

Oracle remaining performance obligations at quarter end (10-Q/10-K XBRL): May 2025 $138B, Aug 2025 $455B, Nov 2025 $523B, Feb 2026 $553B, May 2026 $638B. Rising every quarter, far above the $10B dead band; Microsoft ($684B at Jun 2026) and CoreWeave ($104B) move the same way. Initial seed.

6Timeline notes

  • 2026-05-31 orcl · $638Bas of 2026-05-31
  • 2026-02-28 orcl · $553Bas of 2026-02-28
  • 2025-11-30 orcl · $523Bas of 2025-11-30
  • 2025-08-31 orcl · $455Bas of 2025-08-31
  • 2025-05-31 orcl · $138Bas of 2025-05-31
  • 2025-02-28 orcl · $130Bas of 2025-02-28

7Counterevidence

What cuts against this reading

RPO includes non-cancellable commitments that may never convert; Oracle's ~$300B OpenAI contract is reported, not itemised in the filing. Definitions differ across filers.

8Update history

  1. 2026-09-10unmeasured to concentratingconf 80 · claude-initial-seed

    Oracle remaining performance obligations at quarter end (10-Q/10-K XBRL): May 2025 $138B, Aug 2025 $455B, Nov 2025 $523B, Feb 2026 $553B, May 2026 $638B. Rising every quarter, far above the $10B dead band; Microsoft ($684B at Jun 2026) and CoreWeave ($104B) move the same way. Initial seed.

9Confidence

80 / 95 — good evidence, some ambiguity

Confidence is independent of status: 90–95 multiple strong independent sources; 70–89 good evidence, some ambiguity; 50–69 mixed or hard to operationalise; below 50 limited or vague.

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