March 10 (Reuters) - Oracle CEO Safra Catz said

that the company's large sales backlog will help drive 15%

growth in its revenue next fiscal year, surpassing analysts'

current estimates as it expands its artificial intelligence

cloud services.

Analysts expect revenue growth for its fiscal 2026 to be

12.6%, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Shares of the Austin, Texas-based company rose 2% in

extended trading.

Oracle, which has been a latecomer to a cloud market

dominated by Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Amazon ( AMZN ), has been

working to boost the appeal of its cloud services by

incorporating AI into them to process large amounts of

information.

To support these data-intensive AI services, the company

has been strategically expanding its infrastructure with

investments in both data centers and semiconductor technology.

"We are on schedule to double our data center capacity this

calendar year," Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said.

Oracle is part of an AI joint venture called Stargate, along

with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and Softbank, where they

have committed up to $500 billion towards developing AI

capabilities in the United States.

TD Cowen analysts said in a note last week that Oracle's

data center leasing activity has "significantly picked up in

recent months," with most of it to serve the Stargate project

but some for Oracle's own cloud as well.

Cloud revenue in the third quarter rose 23% to $6.2 billion.

The company reported revenue of $14.13 billion, missing

estimates of $14.39 billion.

On an adjusted basis, the company earned $1.47 per share,

compared with estimates of $1.49 per share.