Oracle falls 3.4% on reports of internal AI challenges

Shares of Oracle dropped 3.4% during the afternoon session on Friday, 18 September 2026. The decline followed a Business Insider report stating that co-CEO Clay Magouyrk acknowledged during an internal town hall that the company previously struggled to make generative artificial intelligence useful for its own staff, despite investing billions of dollars to build AI infrastructure for external clients.

Chief Information Officer Jae Evans also disclosed that the company experienced sticker shock over the steep costs of OpenAI models, including GPT-6 Astra. The report indicated that Oracle faced software development bottlenecks and high false-positive rates when using Anthropic's Mythos tool.

Oracle shares pared some losses later in the session to trade at $145.59, down 3.3% from the prior close. The stock had gained 4.7% a day earlier as benchmark 10-year Treasury yields slipped to 4.949% after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points to a range of 3.75% to 4.00%.

Oracle is down 25.6% year to date and trades 55.6% below its 52-week peak of $328.15 reached in September 2025. Over the past year, the company's shares registered 38 price swings greater than 5%.