Barclays' software research team has produced a ranked list of large-cap infrastructure software companies it believes are positioned to gain as artificial intelligence changes how enterprises deploy and manage technology. The bank ranks Oracle, DigitalOcean, Salesforce and Snowflake among its top choices, arguing that these vendors retain competitive strengths that should allow them to participate in AI-driven growth.
At the core of Barclays' analysis is the view that AI acts as an additive force for existing enterprise software providers rather than a wholesale substitute. The firm points to a range of structural protections enjoyed by incumbents - data gravity that keeps information anchored within platforms, embedded workflows that are hard to dislodge, switching costs that deter migration, and robust security and compliance frameworks - which together reduce the risk of disruption from new entrants focused solely on AI capabilities.
Firm-by-firm highlights
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Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) - Barclays places Oracle at the top of its infrastructure software rankings. The bank views Oracle's entrenched role in enterprise data management as a key advantage as organizations scale AI initiatives that require substantial data and processing capacity. The article notes Oracle has confirmed efforts to supply capacity for its partnership with OpenAI, a development that prompted Wedbush to reiterate an Outperform rating on Oracle. Oracle has also introduced new AI coding agent skills for its NetSuite platform aimed at assisting developers.
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DigitalOcean (NYSE: DOCN) - Barclays ranks DigitalOcean second, citing the company’s cloud infrastructure platform as a foundation for developers and businesses building AI-driven applications. The bank highlights DigitalOcean's positioning amid the broader shift toward cloud-native infrastructure. Recent company actions cited in the bank's coverage include the launch of an AI-Native Cloud platform designed for AI workloads. Following that announcement, Oppenheimer raised its price target for DigitalOcean and Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated an Overweight rating.
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Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) - Placed third by Barclays, Salesforce is noted for its wide customer base and embedded workflows that create switching costs and make it more difficult for alternatives to supplant the company's solutions as AI capabilities are integrated. The article references an expanded partnership between Salesforce and Google Cloud intended to allow AI agents to execute workflows across both platforms. Separately, Truist Securities reiterated a Buy rating on Salesforce after the company held its TDX developer conference.
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Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) - Barclays includes Snowflake as its fourth pick, pointing to the company's data warehousing and analytics strengths as relevant for organizations needing robust infrastructure to support AI use cases. The coverage notes that some analysts adjusted their price targets on Snowflake - UBS and Evercore ISI lowered their targets, citing concerns tied to AI-related competition and valuation, respectively - and that Snowflake announced a change in its chief revenue officer.
Barclays' strategic view
The bank stresses that enterprise vendors benefit from several structural advantages that protect market positions as new technologies emerge. Data gravity keeps customer information and related workloads within incumbent platforms, while compliance and security obligations make enterprises cautious about migrating critical systems to unfamiliar providers. Barclays also cautions that focusing too narrowly on single-customer concentration as a risk signal can understate the size of the opportunity available to AI infrastructure providers.
Overall, Barclays' analysis suggests these selected infrastructure software companies are more insulated from disruption than some investors may assume. The bank highlights that the existing customer relationships and technical foundations of these vendors provide practical pathways to participate in AI growth rather than being displaced by it.
Implications for markets and sectors
Barclays' rankings spotlight companies across database management, cloud infrastructure, customer relationship management and cloud data warehousing. These sectors - enterprise software, cloud services and data platforms - are identified by the bank as central to the enterprise AI transition given their roles in hosting, managing and securing the data and workflows AI requires.