D.A. Davidson says that OpenAI is back on track after correcting several strategic missteps, a shift the firm believes could lift key beneficiaries in its ecosystem such as Oracle . The investment firm sees a brighter future ahead for the artificial intelligence company, upgrading it in a Monday note. Analyst Gil Luria wrote that OpenAI has "corrected several missteps" since September, with the company refocusing on ChatGPT and its core frontier model. "This includes going down the path of turning on ads, which will be critical for increased monetization and reduced cash burn. Management also appears to have realized that they need to align with NVDA, MSFT and AMZN, instead of trying to compete with them," Luria wrote. Over the next few weeks, Luria believes that OpenAI will exceed investors' expectations with regards to its model performance and capital raising, which should help drive significant positive stock performances for the main companies in its orbit. These include Nvidia, Microsoft, CoreWeave and especially Oracle, the analyst wrote. Luria also upgraded Oracle to a buy rating from neutral, further reflecting his optimism when it comes to OpenAI. The analyst stuck by his $180 price target for the stock, which implies that shares of Oracle could rally 26% from their Friday close. Oracle stock has slipped 18% over the past 12 months and nearly 27% this year. ORCL 1Y mountain ORCL 1Y chart "Considering ORCL's move from $345 intraday 9/11/25 to the current $143 and subsequent moves down in NVDA and MSFT tied to OpenAI concerns, we believe the market has overshot to the downside," Luria wrote. But going forward, the analyst has adopted a more bullish stance on Oracle. Specifically, he believes that OpenAI raising another $100 billion in capital by the end of the quarter could benefit Oracle, as this money would help pay for the data centers Oracle is building for OpenAI. "Since the market is currently assigning the OpenAI relationship a negative value, we believe the fundraise will serve as a catalyst for outperformance," he wrote. "We believe that a revamped OpenAI will return to its position as Google's top challenger and with a fresh stack of capital be able to live up to its obligations this year, including to Oracle." Luria believes that companies will continue to pay for Oracle's software products. The analyst also pointed out that the addition of TikTok USA represents additional upside of as much as $5 billion to $9 billion. "While there were some reports of friction around app performance during the separation from ByteDance, we have seen no reason to believe TikTok USA will not continue to be a major social media platform in the U.S.," he added.
