The Financial Post reports in its Friday edition that Oracle shares fell the most in more than 24 years after the company had a jump in spending on AI data centres and other equipment, rising outlays that are taking longer to translate into cloud revenue than investors want. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that capital expenditures, a metric of data centre spending, were about $12-billion in the quarter, an increase from $8.5-billion in the preceding period, the company reported Wednesday (all figures U.S.). Analysts expected $8.25-billion in capital spending in the quarter. Fiscal second-quarter cloud sales increased 34 per cent to $7.98-billion, while revenue in the company's closely watched infrastructure business gained 68 per cent to $4.08-billion. Both numbers fell just short of analysts' estimates. The shares were down by about 11.5 per cent Thursday afternoon, their biggest intraday decline since March, 2001, erasing about $80-billion in market value. Oracle's stock had already lost about a third of its value since a record high on Sept. 10. Meanwhile, a measure of Oracle's credit risk reached a fresh 16-year high. Before entering the cloud computing market, Oracle was known for its database software.