Speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado on Tuesday, Mendler emphasized how massive leaps in launch capacity and spacecraft manufacturing are supercharging the space economy. Satellites have evolved from isolated scientific missions into large constellations of thousands. And they all require the type of network routing Northwood builds, she said.

Northwood is focused on the ground segment, which Mendler described as the networking system linking Earth and space. Without this infrastructure, she argued, a satellites would be a “really expensive hump of metal up in space.”

“For a long time, the space economy has existed, but it’s been pretty niche,” Mendler said. “The economics are switching. You can see that that is leading to adoption and market share from major parts of the economy like telecom.”

SpaceX’s Starlink, which beams internet access to customers on Earth, currently has more than 10,000 operational satellites in low-Earth orbit, while Amazon’s Project Kuiper is racing to launch its own constellation of satellites. SpaceX and other companies also hope to eventually launch so-called orbital compute data centers. Companies are striking massive multi-billion-dollar deals to deliver AI compute services via space infrastructure.

The burgeoning space industry will get a big boost this week when SpaceX is expected to make its public market debut under the ticker SPCX at a $1.75 trillion valuation. The IPO is expected to raise $75 billion, making it the largest IPO in history, surpassing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 debut.

Northwood recently closed a $100 million Series B funding round led by Washington Harbour Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. The company is betting heavily on Earth-based data infrastructure. Its flagship product, named Portal, uses a network of smaller, individual antennas that work together as a single, powerful system designed to replace traditional parabolic dishes.

Mendler’s philosophy is that space networking should be a shared resource, akin to how cloud infrastructure supports tech startups. By providing this shared layer, Northwood aims to drastically shorten the timeline for new space ventures. What took industry leaders like SpaceX 20 years to build could soon be achieved in five, she said.

A Hollywood story

Mendler is a former Disney Channel actress, appearing in popular TV shows such as Good Luck Charlie and Wizards of Waverly Place. She said she views her Hollywood background as “traditional” for a space CEO because both industries require a high risk tolerance and the ability to beat significant odds.

She also views space-based energy as an exciting use case, noting that there is an “abundance of energy in space” which could help solve terrestrial energy supply concerns.

“Data is the way that you gather value from the space economy,” she said. “So, the more throughput you can get through space, the space economy directly grows.”

More from the 25th annual Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference:

Anthropic’s Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code, says there are days he manages tens of thousands of AI agents at once

The AI industry spent years chasing bigger models. Now it’s chasing efficiency

‘Not an Allbirds Moment’: Xbox’s new CEO says she is grounding the console in gaming roots not AI

Investors simply don’t know what to make of Oracle (ORCL 2.28%). The cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI) provider has reported better-than-expected results for three consecutive quarters, yet the stock sits near where it began 2026.

Expectations were high heading into the company’s quarterly financial report, as investors were hoping to get some insight into the company’s AI-driven future, but things remain as murky as ever, and despite delivering a beat and raise, the stock was down as much as 10% in after-hours trading (as of this writing).

Let’s take a look at the results, how Oracle performed, and why investors shrugged off the results.

A broken record

To say Oracle reported record results might be an understatement, as the company used the word “record” 20 times in its quarterly financial report. For its fiscal 2026 fourth quarter (ended May 31), both sales and profit growth came in ahead of expectations. Record revenue of $19.2 billion climbed 21% year over year, driving record adjusted earnings per share (EPS) that increased 24% to $2.11.

For context, analysts’ consensus estimates called for revenue of $19.09 billion and adjusted EPS of $1.96, so Oracle surpassed both benchmarks with ease.

Growth in the company’s cloud segment accelerated once again, jumping 47% year over year to a record $9.9 billion and accounting for more than half of Oracle’s total revenue. The vast majority of that increase came thanks to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which competes in cloud computing with the likes of Amazon Web Services, Alphabet‘s Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. OCI revenue grew 93% year over year in the current quarter — outpacing all of its larger rivals.

Oracle’s backlog once again made headlines. The company’s remaining performance obligation (RPO) — the value of contracted sales not yet included in revenue — rose to a record $638 billion, surging 636% year over year, after adding $85 billion during the quarter.

The company noted that most of the RPO increase was due to “large-scale AI contracts” in which the customer prepaid Oracle for the purchase of graphics processing units (GPUs) or purchased the GPUs and supplied them to Oracle. The company was quick to remind investors that “This substantially reduces the amount of capital Oracle must raise to build out our AI data centers.”

For the upcoming first quarter, Oracle’s outlook calls for revenue of $19 billion at the midpoint of its guidance, representing year-over-year growth of 28%. The company is also forecasting cloud revenue of $11.6 billion, an increase of 61% at the midpoint, or 60% in constant currency. This would result in adjusted EPS of $1.74, up 19% in U.S. dollars.

Oracle maintained its full-year fiscal 2027 revenue forecast of $90 billion, up 34%, but raised its adjusted EPS forecast to $8.05, representing 18% growth.

Finally, the board of directors declared a dividend of $0.50 payable on July 24 to shareholders of record as of July 10. That works out to a yield of 1%. With a payout ratio of just 40%, there’s still plenty more where that came from.

Today’s Change

(-2.28%) $-4.70

Current Price

$201.11

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$592B

Day’s Range

$198.19 – $212.38

52wk Range

$134.57 – $345.72

Volume

1.9M

Avg Vol

27.2M

Gross Margin

64.30%

Dividend Yield

0.97%

Why is the stock down?

That all sounds like good news, so why is the stock falling? It seems there were two concerns for investors. First, Wall Street was expecting cloud revenue of $9.99 billion, but Oracle fell short at $9.91 billion. In my book, that suggests analysts need to adjust their models to get their estimates closer to reality. However, the second and more likely culprit was Oracle’s plan to raise $40 billion to fund its data center build-out, which the company said would be funded through a mix of equity sales and debt.

Oracle is already saddled with a growing mountain of debt totaling more than $162 billion, with more than $50 billion added over the past year alone to fund its data center build-out, so investors are likely wary of taking on any additional debt. Furthermore, additional stock sales will likely dilute existing shareholders, reducing shareholders’ proportional ownership of the company. That’s rarely taken well by investors.

Moreover, there are still worries about Oracle’s $300 billion of RPO related to OpenAI. Earlier this year, the start-up revealed it was generating $2 billion in monthly revenue, but has yet to turn a profit. As such, investors are concerned that 47% of Oracle’s RPO depends on OpenAI’s success or failure, so it’s viewed with a wary eye.  

While these issues certainly bear scrutiny, I think the after-hours sell-off is overdone.

Despite its consistently improving performance, Oracle stock is still attractively priced at 25 times forward earnings.