Neither the author, Tim Fries, nor this website, The Tokenist, provide financial advice. Please consult our website policy prior to making financial decisions.
In all sectors, it is exceedingly important to have a force multiplier to get ahead of the competition or to maintain hegemony. This is why there has been a concerted push for AI through public-private partnerships (PPPs), from Larry Ellison’s $500-billion Stargate Project to the $600-billion commitment in Saudi Arabia.
And this is why Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted that the U.S. has to “win in AI and quantum” or “everything else doesn’t matter” at the Milken Institute in early May. For warfare purposes, AI is suitable for a wide range of roles: coordination between autonomous vehicles, missile guidance and tracking, image and video analysis, intercepting and interpreting signals, running wargame simulations, monitoring social media, supply chain optimization, threat detection, automated defence and target acquisition.
But governments can only maintain and expand their power through public-private partnerships, as companies deliver the needed expertise and resources. These companies are rapidly emerging as the top players in the AI-warfare arena.
Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL)
The aforementioned Larry Ellison built up Oracle since the late 1970s into a global Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) company, with Ellison serving as CTO and executive chairman.
The company’s revenue largely comes from subscription fees for these cloud services, alongside software license updates, consulting and hardware sales. By offering integrated solutions for data analytics and cloud management needs, Oracle services both mid-sized businesses and large multinationals.
However, the overarching drive for Oracle lies in technology-driven governance. This has been demonstrated in Ellison’s major contributions to Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the world’s largest and most influential NGO with strong focus on harmonized digital records, and AI to leverage the insight from those records.
Larry Ellison himself noted that AI-powered governance is key to having citizens on their “best behavior”. In addition to the Stargate Project, as the necessary data center infrastructure in collaboration with OpenAI and SoftBank, the company recently announced the Oracle Defense Ecosystem initiative.
This should be understood as another stack in building up future AI-powered governance through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which is already in wide use by defense and government contractors. In partnership with Metron, Oracle can then serve as the primary layer to take in other entities, under controlled conditions, and give them OODA (observe, orient, decide, and act) tools.
Of course, this layer has great potential for compounding profits, similar to Palantir’s positioning to provide hegemony technology.
Year-to-date, ORCL stock is up 27%, with the company’s IaaS revenue up 52% to $3 billion in the latest earnings report for fiscal Q4 2025. In the earnings call, Ellison boldly stated that Oracle will become the “most profitable cloud applications company in the world”, given that it will “build more cloud infrastructure data centers than all of our infrastructure competitors combined.”
Presently priced at $211, the average ORCL price target is in line, at $211.45 per share according to WSJ forecasting. The bottom outlook is $170, while the ceiling price target for ORCL stock is $246 per share.
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Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: PLTR)
As one of our most covered companies, we’ve maintained that Palantir’s AI stack resembles Microsoft’s path to dominance with its Windows operating system. Serving both governments and corporations, Palantir automates away redundant bureaucracy but also provides “actionable insight” with granular AI-powered workflow.
In close relationship with Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) to streamline governance processes, and after getting selected by President Trump to harmonize digital records on citizens, it is now even more likely that Palantir will become the Microsoft of governance systems.
Expectedly, Palantir is also in a strategic relationship with Ellison’s Oracle, leveraging Oracle’s robust cloud infrastructure and existing inroads with government contractors.
In short, as governments and corporations become more complex, the need for their effective and more responsive control will become greater. Although both China and the U.S. already have state-run capitalism, China is more effective by not having democratic layers.
By implementing networked, AI-based layers, this should give the U.S. the necessary edge to compete, putting Oracle and Palantir at the center of this transformation.
Year-to-date, PLTR stock is up 86%, presently priced at $141.41 per share. Although the news-driven bullish trajectory elevated Palantir’s valuation, this is likely to subside. The average PLTR price target is now $107, with the bottom forecast of $40 and the ceiling price target of $160 per share.
Archer Aviation Inc. (NYSE: ACHR)
Continuing with the theme of interconnectedness, both Oracle and Palantir partnered with Anduril Industries, the rising star in the military industrial complex focused on AI-powered autonomous vehicles and ordnance systems.
The head of Anduril is Palmer Luckey, the original founder of Oculus VR which was sold to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. Most recently after securing another $2.5 billion funding round, to a total of $6.26 billion, Luckey announced plans for a $900 million manufacturing facility Arsenal-1 in Ohio.
Although Anduril is not a publicly traded company, Archer Aviation will contribute in deploying a new generation of weaponry through its defense division. On its own, Archer is the primary candidate for commercialized eVTOL deployment, as we extensively covered on Monday, including the stock’s prospects.
Disclaimer: The author does not hold or have a position in any securities discussed in the article. All stock prices were quoted at the time of writing.
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