Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money, said on Friday that OpenAI needs to raise cash to pay Oracle and discussed where the data center trade might go next.
“What really mattered today, though, is the possibility that funding for the data center build-out, something that was beginning to seem chimerical, has tantalizingly returned to a degree of certainty. The possibility that there are many pools of capital that may still want to get into data center, into AI, could drive a whole host of down-and-out tech stocks higher. Rather than limping into 2026, these stocks have erupted. It’s very unexpected. But can it last? This is the question. Look, I’ve been a hypercritical person when it comes to the data center promoters of late… I don’t like deals like the companies are doing, where one company gives another company money, and the recipient then buys product from the donor company. These are called Lazy Susan deals or circular deals.”
READ ALSO: Jim Cramer Talked About 8 Tech and Consumer Sector Stocks and Jim Cramer’s Latest Insights on These 13 Stocks.
Talking about what needs to happen next, Cramer said that OpenAI should move quickly and attempt to raise $200 billion at a valuation of $1 trillion, saying the momentum seen this week makes such a move possible. He said that the path looks like the only real option. He noted that with that level of funding, OpenAI could pay Oracle what it requires to build out the data centers. He added that once that happens, every other hyperscaler would be forced to keep spending heavily on infrastructure just to keep pace.
“The bottom line: No matter what, OpenAI needs to raise a lot of money, and it needs to raise it now, or else the whole data center edifice will go down and stay down. But if they raise $100 billion dollars in the next couple of weeks, then we will live to play again, and we’ll see plenty more days just like today.”
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 11 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on December 19. We listed the stocks in the order that Cramer mentioned them. We also provided hedge fund sentiment for each stock as of the third quarter of 2025, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s database of 978 hedge funds.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 427.7% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 264 percentage points (see more details here).
Jim Cramer Answered Questions About These 11 Stocks
11. StubHub Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:STUB)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 29
StubHub Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:STUB) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer answered questions about. Answering a caller’s query about the stock during the lightning round, Cramer said:
“No, they’re losing too much money. We’re going to stay away from them. We don’t want to own the ones that are losing money. We got so many that are making money. They’re going down. We need the losers.”
StubHub Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:STUB) runs a digital marketplace for buying and selling tickets to live events, including sports, concerts, and theatre, through its StubHub and viagogo platforms. Cramer highlighted the company’s first results after going public during the November 13 episode and called the results “disappointing.” The Mad Money host said:
“Because of those soft results from Ticketmaster, I’d also like to point out that StubHub, a similar business that I warned you away from after it came public in September, is now down 20% from its IPO price. Not good. In fact, it’s now down more than that because the stock is moving lower in after-hours trading, after StubHub reported a disappointing result in its first earnings report as a public company after the close tonight, first.”
10. EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 79
EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer answered questions about. A caller sought Cramer’s opinion on the stock, and he stated:
“Oh man, they’ve got a lot of money…. I mean, they sold a lot of product. It’s all about… their bandwidth, their broadband, and they’ve got it, and they sold it, and I think the play is over. Boy, they had a lot of it, more than I realized.”
EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS) provides networking technologies and communications services, including satellite television, streaming video, wireless connectivity, broadband access, and 5G infrastructure. After the company stock nearly doubled in just two days after a major deal with AT&T and signs of progress with regulators, Cramer commented on the turnaround during the Squawk on the Street episode aired on August 27. He said, “It’s an incredible, what a comeback that is for something that a lot of people…”
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