NPR reported on October 22, 2026, that Matt Sheridan, a finance lecturer at The Ohio State University, estimated Oracle’s total debt at $169 billion. Oracle’s Form 10-Q lists $125.337 billion in notes payable and other borrowings as of August 31, 2026. The filing lists operating lease liabilities and cash separately, so its borrowing total is a specific balance-sheet subtotal.
What Oracle reported on August 31, 2026
Oracle’s filing breaks its notes payable and other borrowings into current and non-current amounts. It reports lease liabilities and cash on separate lines.
| Balance-sheet line | Amount (USD millions) | As of |
| Current notes payable and other borrowings | $7,625 | August 31, 2026 |
| Non-current notes payable and other borrowings | $117,712 | August 31, 2026 |
| Total current and non-current borrowings | $125,337 | August 31, 2026 |
| Operating lease liabilities | $30,594 | August 31, 2026 |
| Cash and cash equivalents | $36,369 | August 31, 2026 |
The $125.337 billion borrowing subtotal is the sum of $7.625 billion current and $117.712 billion non-current borrowings. The $30.594 billion in operating lease liabilities and $36.369 billion in cash and cash equivalents are separate filing lines.
How the $169 billion estimate differs
NPR attributed the $169 billion total-debt estimate to Sheridan. He also said Oracle’s debt load had nearly doubled over two years. The filing’s $125.337 billion figure, by comparison, is the dated sum of two specifically labeled borrowing lines. The estimate and the filing subtotal are different descriptions of Oracle’s debt, not interchangeable figures.
Cloud revenue and interest expense by quarter
Oracle reported both cloud revenue and interest expense for the three months ended August 31 in 2025 and 2026. These are quarterly amounts, not balance-sheet debt totals.
| Measure (USD millions) | Three months ended August 31, 2025 | Three months ended August 31, 2026 |
| Cloud revenue | $7,186 | $11,607 |
| Interest expense | $923 | $1,428 |
Cloud revenue and interest expense describe different parts of Oracle’s quarterly results. The first is revenue from its cloud business; the second is interest expense recorded for the quarter.
Reported AI financing and credit concerns
NPR described Oracle as buying Nvidia chips for its cloud expansion, Nvidia as investing in OpenAI, and OpenAI as buying Oracle cloud capacity. NPR also reported that OpenAI had promised Oracle about $300 billion over roughly five years.
NPR reported that S&P downgraded Oracle’s credit in July 2026. It also reported that Oracle had signaled possible difficulty paying loans on time, and that a notice could allow delayed payments while leaving the full amount due. NeoTeo has also covered this market measure of credit risk in its report on Oracle’s credit-default-swap spread.
