US stocks opened mixed on Thursday, with a 15% tumble for Oracle (ORCL) which put more tech-exposed gauges under pressure after its earnings reignited AI bubble fears. The FTSE 100 (^FTSE) and European stocks pushed higher despite a muted start.

It came as data from the Department of Labor published showed workers filed 236,000 initial jobless claims for the week ending 6 December, the biggest jump since 2020, and an increase of 44,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 192,000 claims. The four-week moving average for initial claims was 216,750.

However, ongoing unemployment claims decreased 99,000 to 1.83 million for the week ending 29 November.

Meanwhile, software giant Oracle missed revenue and profit expectations and also reported a jump in spending on AI data centres, where it has already been spending and borrowing heavily.

Capital expenditure for the 2026 fiscal year is now expected to be $15bn higher than the $35bn Oracle estimated in September. The company also booked a one-off $2.7bn pre-tax gain through the sale of its stake in chip designer Ampere Computing.

For the last quarter, Oracle reported total revenue of $16.06bn, below analysts’ average estimate of $16.21bn. It added that adjusted profit for the current fiscal third quarter would be $1.64 to $1.68 per share, below analyst estimates of $1.72 per share, according to LSEG data.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, said: “The company continued to burn cash last quarter: its free cash flow reached a negative $10bn. To make matters worse, the company said that it expects capex to reach about $50bn in the fiscal year ending May 2026 – $15bn more than its September forecast – and investments at Oracle are financed by debt: overall, the company has about $106bn in debt.”

“Frankly, the report was not dramatically bad, but it came to confirm concerns around heavy AI spending, financed by debt, with an unknown timeline for revenue generation, sending Oracle shares down by more than 11% in after-hours trading.”

Last night, the US central bank cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point as expected, to their lowest level in three years.

While the Fed’s move had been priced in for several weeks, investors took some cheer from the fact that boss Jerome Powell was less hawkish in his post-meeting remarks.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: “Another day, another rate cut. What’s normally a driver for equity markets has become old news, and investors have shrugged off the Fed’s latest reduction in US borrowing costs as it is becoming harder to guess where rates might go next.”