Ellison cancels $7.5bn Oracle share sale as AI bet faces scrutiny

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has scrapped plans to sell up to $7.5bn of stock in the database company, reversing course just one day after the proposed sale was disclosed. The decision removes a potential overhang on the company’s shares at a moment when investors are questioning the cost of its aggressive push into artificial intelligence data centres. Ellison, the world’s seventh-richest man, had planned to sell as many as 50mn shares by the end of October under a trading plan established in late June, according to Oracle’s latest quarterly filing. At Friday’s closing price of $150, the stake was worth roughly $7.5bn.

The company said in a statement on Saturday that no Oracle stock was sold under the plan and that Ellison has no other plans to sell any of his holdings. Oracle declined to explain the change of heart. A person close to Ellison said he considers the shares undervalued, though that person declined to say whether he intends to buy more in the coming months.

The about-face comes as Oracle’s stock has fallen by more than half since the company disclosed a $300bn deal with OpenAI in September. On Thursday, Oracle reported higher revenue from its data centre business, but the shares slipped as investors warned that margins continue to compress on the back of the company’s all-in bet on AI infrastructure. The tension between top-line growth and profitability has become the central question for Oracle’s investment case, and Ellison’s decision to hold his stake signals confidence in the long-term payoff even as the market remains sceptical.

Ellison, 82, remains the company’s largest individual shareholder with a 40 per cent stake, and his personal finances are deeply tied to the stock. As of September 2025, he had pledged 346mn Oracle shares as collateral to secure personal loans, according to the company’s most recent proxy filing. That existing leverage makes the decision to forgo a $7.5bn cash sale notable, particularly given the scale of his other commitments. In December, Ellison agreed to personally backstop the $40bn equity financing of his son’s hostile bid for Warner Bros Discovery. Separately, Paramount Skydance, the production company helmed by his son David, has agreed to freeze its proposed merger until as late as next June while a dozen US states seek to block the deal on antitrust grounds. Ellison also finances a number of high-profile research projects, including the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford and the Ellison Medical Institute in Los Angeles.

Oracle’s transformation under Ellison’s direction is far from complete. The company has raised substantial debt and issued new shares to fund its build-out for OpenAI, a project that has been hampered by permit and regulatory hurdles. It has also undertaken sweeping layoffs, disclosing on Friday that it had allocated an extra $700mn to finance severance costs in the coming year, after spending $2.1bn in the last fiscal year when it cut tens of thousands of workers. Ellison has not appeared on recent earnings calls after being a constant presence for decades, though a person close to him said he remains “super active” in day-to-day decision-making.

The cancellation of the sale is a small but meaningful signal. It removes a source of supply that would have weighed on the stock, and it aligns Ellison’s public posture with his stated view that the shares are undervalued. But the broader picture remains one of a founder doubling down on a capital-intensive strategy at a time when margins, regulatory scrutiny and execution risk are all in focus. For investors, the question is not whether Ellison believes in the AI build-out; it is whether the market will eventually share that conviction at a price that justifies the cost.