A $10,000 investment in Oracle (ORCL -3.65%) made one year ago is worth about $6,300 today, dividends included. The stock closed at $248.28 on Aug. 15, 2025, and it trades at about $154 as of this writing — a decline of about 38%.

That one number undersells the ride. Within a month of that purchase, the stake was briefly worth almost $14,000. By late July of this year, it had shrunk to about $4,600. I can’t think of another company this large that traveled that far in both directions in 12 months.

Here’s the path between those two numbers.

The pop

Last Sept. 9, Oracle reported fiscal 2026 first-quarter results that changed how the market thought about the company. Revenue grew 12%, which was fine.

The number that mattered was remaining performance obligations (RPO), the contracted future revenue the company hasn’t yet delivered. RPO hit $455 billion, up 359% year over year, on a handful of multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence (AI) contracts.

The next day, the stock rose 36%, its biggest one-day gain since 1992, adding about $244 billion of market value and touching a record high of $345.72 along the way. At that peak, the $10,000 stake was briefly worth nearly $14,000. Management also laid out a path for cloud infrastructure revenue to grow from $18 billion in fiscal 2026 to a projected $144 billion by fiscal 2030.

And the demand itself held up, for what it’s worth. RPO kept climbing all year and ended fiscal 2026 (this past May) at $638 billion, up $85 billion in the final quarter alone. Cloud infrastructure revenue accelerated as the year went on, from 55% year-over-year growth in the fiscal first quarter to 93% by the fiscal fourth quarter, reaching $18.1 billion for the full year. Total revenue rose 17% to $67.4 billion, and earnings per share climbed 34% to $5.83 on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis.

Paying for it

So the growth showed up. What the market spent the rest of the year weighing was the bill for delivering it.

Oracle spent $55.7 billion on capital expenditures in fiscal 2026, up from $21.2 billion in fiscal 2025. That spending more than doubled in a single year. Operating cash flow of $32.0 billion, up an impressive 54%, couldn’t keep pace, and free cash flow came in at negative $23.7 billion.

To cover the gap, the company raised $43 billion in debt and $5 billion in equity during the fiscal year, and it expects to raise about $40 billion more in fiscal 2027, including a $20 billion at-the-market stock issuance (selling new shares directly into the market) that dilutes existing shareholders.

The cost-cutting turned severe, too. Oracle ended fiscal 2026 with about 141,000 full-time employees, roughly 21,000 fewer than a year earlier. Of course, the dividend kept arriving ($0.50 per quarter, or about $80 on the stake over the year), but that barely dents a decline of this size.

Investors repriced the company accordingly. The stock had its worst week since 2001 in late June, and in late July it touched a 52-week low of $114.50 — down 67% from the September peak. At that price, shares fetched about 14 times the earnings management was guiding for. A $10,000 stake from August 2025 was worth about $4,600 that day.

Today’s Change

(-3.65%) $-5.70

Current Price

$150.52

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$434BMarket cap calculated using publicly traded shares outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or dual-class non-traded shares. Implied market cap may vary.

Day’s Range

$148.80 – $156.39

52wk Range

$114.50 – $345.72

Volume

21.9M

Avg Vol

31.9M

Gross Margin

63.34%

Dividend Yield

1.33%

Where that leaves it

Shares have recovered about 35% from the July low. And the growth is not slowing. Management guided for fiscal 2027 revenue of about $90 billion, up more than 30%, with first-quarter revenue expected to grow 27% to 29%.

However, the price of that growth has changed character entirely. The fiscal 2027 guidance also calls for $8.05 of non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share, which puts the stock at about 19 times its own earnings guidance. That’s far below the premium the stock commanded last fall, and the multiple looks reasonable only if the guidance is hit while tens of billions of dollars of spending continue.

In short, the market never stopped believing in Oracle’s demand. The backlog grew through the entire decline. What changed is the price investors will pay for growth that requires this much capital and this much dilution to deliver.

A year ago, the market valued Oracle like a software company with an exciting backlog. Today it’s valued like what it has become — a capital-intensive builder of AI infrastructure. The lower price arguably fits the harder business.

And the concern is warranted: Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, for example, have been coined “pervert glasses” for recording people undressing, and the company is even being sued after a study revealed Meta’s subcontractors are viewing your most intimate moments. This is all culminating into a real privacy concern as not only is your right to privacy (or lack thereof) in the public realm coming into question, but so is how to stop what you do in public from getting stored on a company’s servers. 

“We are living in weird times,” Jim Waldo, a professor of computer science who teaches several technological privacy courses at Harvard, told Fortune. “The technology is changing. It’s the combination of the Meta Glasses with facial recognition, AI, and a number of other sorts of technologies that are all coming together and putting us in an environment that we just aren’t prepared to deal with yet.”

The privacy concerns are real—from the suit to data collection, and even the social media content made with the tech has left people chalking up Meta Glasses as a form of surveillance. Even Meta’s Instagram has had to act: the platform disabled several accounts thanks to violations of content usage after those accounts amassed millions of followers by streaming live feeds from Meta glasses.

“We don’t want harassing content on our platforms and take it down when we find it,” a spokesperson for Instagram told Fortune.

A new era of wearable technology

Gone are the days of “dumb” smart wear. No longer are wearables contained to just your fitness trackers or your sleep monitors, they now have cameras with AI built in them. Most prominently in this space are Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, which have cameras built directly into the frames, allowing users to take photos and videos without pulling out a phone. The glasses also have microphones that capture audio, and Meta has enabled livestreaming directly from the glasses to Facebook and Instagram.

There’s a way to tell if you’re being recorded: the glasses use a white capture LED on the front of the frames that blinks when content is being captured. Meta says the LED cannot be switched off and that the camera is disabled if the LED is covered or blocked.

“We will keep strengthening our protections as our glasses become even more capable,” Meta spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby told Fortune.

But experts are still concerned about the privacy implications of wearable technology. “They’re making it safe for the consumer,” Waldo said. “They’re not making it safe for the people around the consumer.”

There are also legal implications for the use of these smart glasses in public. Gene Kang, partner at law firm Rivkin Radler LLP, told Fortune the technology itself is not necessarily the problem, but that people don’t know they could be filmed.

“If you’re holding up your phone to somebody’s face, they’re going to know,” Kang said. In that situation, he explained, there could potentially be an argument for implied consent if the person knows they’re being recorded and does nothing to object. With the inconspicuous glasses, however, that assumption becomes much harder to make—meaning privacy and consent laws can potentially be invoked.

“If they’re not aware that they’re being recorded, then I think that presents a different issue,” he added. “I think they would potentially have a claim there.”

Discreet recordings, “Pick-up artistry” and data sensitivity

According to a study done by University of Sydney researchers, “pick-up artistry” content has picked up in recent years. This type of content, spread around social media and mainly perpetrated by individuals in the “pick-up artist” community, attracts viewers who wish to watch point-of-view reels of women being approached in public.

The study found 60% of over 350 videos analyzed involved behavior classified as potentially harassing. In 43% of the videos, women were subjected to derogatory commentary, and other subjects were identified or doxxed. The study focuses on what the researchers defined as “ambient capture”—recording people in their everyday surroundings without them realizing that a camera was pointed at them.

The researchers found a relationship between the apparent covertness of the recording devices and the severity of the harassment. “We should all be very concerned,” Dr. Milica Stilinovic, one of the study’s authors, told Fortune.

Fighting back

The harmful content perpetrated online echoed concerns among consumers, leading them to find avenues to protect themselves. People have started to use face markings to confuse the facial recognition system within the glasses, and a theory has circulated online to sing copyrighted songs when under suspicion of being recorded.

Some individuals have even developed software to help notify users for potential smart glass intrusion. Professor. Dr. Yves Jeanrenaud built an open-source, free software app Nearby Glasses, allowing users—as the name suggests—to be notified when Meta Glasses are nearby. According to its open-source repository, Jeanrenaud developed the app in response to “an intolerable intrusion, consent neglecting, horrible piece of tech that is already used for making various and tons of equally truely disgusting ‘content’.”

According to the Google Play store, the app has amassed over 100,000 downloads to date.

And while the app was made to help users stay aware of potential discreet filming, Professor Jeanrenaud included a disclaimer on the use of his technology.

“It’s still an imperfect approach and probably always will be,” he wrote. “It’s not all good only because this app exists now. We need better solutions to curb surveillance tech and privacy intrusion.”

Not all of the methods are feasible, however. A recent social media theory has circulated citing Disney songs can protect you from being filmed. The idea is that Disney’s notorious copyright strikes would be enough to get any unsolicited videos taken down across social media. But according to Kang, hiding behind copyright isn’t an effective way to protect yourself from discreet filming. 

“If you’re the person being recorded, you don’t own any copyright to the composition,” he explained. However, while he did add that copyright may not be an effective claim, he also said individuals who want to protect themselves should look into privacy claims instead.

“It’s really a privacy issue,” he said. “Which still could be applicable here.”