UAE retail investors shifted toward the companies building the physical and computational backbone of artificial intelligence during the third quarter of 2026, according to data from trading platform eToro, while pulling back from software businesses seen as increasingly vulnerable to AI disruption.
Oracle topped the list of stocks with the biggest proportionate increase in UAE holders on the platform, up 86 per cent over the quarter. The move tracks the company’s recent momentum: in September, Oracle reported more than USD 30 billion in new AI cloud contracts during its fiscal first quarter alone, with a total order book that Josh Gilbert, eToro’s Lead Analyst for Asia Pacific and the Middle East, put at USD 664 billion.
“UAE investors are following the AI money to where it’s actually being spent,” Gilbert said. “Oracle signed more than USD 30 billion in new AI cloud contracts in a single quarter and now has a USD 664 billion order book, an eye-watering amount of work that customers have already committed to.”
Grab Holdings ranked second among the biggest risers, up 83 per cent. Memory and storage company SanDisk Corp/DE came third, with holders rising 56 per cent, followed by Nike at 41 per cent. Space companies Rocket Lab and SpaceX ranked fifth and sixth, up 34 per cent and 24 per cent respectively. Semiconductor firm Broadcom came seventh at 22 per cent, digital advertising company The Trade Desk and Micron Technology both ranked at 20 per cent, and Uber rounded out the top ten at 16 per cent.
The cluster of chip, memory, and storage names alongside Oracle was telling. Gilbert noted that investors appeared to be looking past headline AI companies toward businesses supplying the infrastructure those models depend on.
The picture was reversed on the fallers list. Customer experience software company NICE Ltd. saw its UAE holder count fall 84 per cent, equal to cosmetics firm e.l.f. Beauty. Website builder Wix dropped 77 per cent, followed by BioMarin Pharma at 74 per cent, Accenture at 72 per cent, Sea Ltd. at 71 per cent, Tempus AI at 58 per cent, Salesforce at 57 per cent, Bitmine Immersion Technologies at 50 per cent, and Duolingo at 46 per cent.
“UAE investors are following the AI money to where it’s actually being spent, and Oracle has become one of the clearest ways to own that build-out. Oracle signed more than USD$30 billion in new AI cloud contracts in a single quarter and now has a USD$664 billion order book, an eye-watering amount of work that customers have already committed to. With Broadcom, Sandisk, and Micron joining it on the risers list, investors in the region are looking past the household AI names towards the companies supplying everything that an AI model depends on,” Josh Gilbert, Lead Analyst, Asia Pacific & Middle East at etoro said in a statement.
The divergence between Nike, fourth among the risers, and e.l.f. Beauty, second among the fallers, suggested investors were making stock-specific calls rather than broad sector moves. Gilbert described Nike’s rise as a possible value play after shares fell to a 12-year low, while cautioning that the recovery still faced real hurdles around retail relationships, sales in China, and margin pressure. “Investors will need patience for the recovery; it will certainly be a marathon and not a sprint.”
At the portfolio level, Nvidia held its position as the most widely held stock among eToro’s UAE users. Amazon rose from third to second place and Tesla from fourth to third, while Microsoft slipped from second to fourth. Apple, Meta, and Alphabet retained fifth, sixth, and seventh respectively. Alibaba climbed to eighth, displacing Strategy Inc., while Nio Inc. remained tenth.
