Oracle stock sale plan scrapped by Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison has withdrawn a plan to sell as many as 50 million Oracle shares, a stake worth about $7.5 billion at current prices. The Oracle founder changed course only a day after a regulatory filing made the trading plan public.

Sale plan reversed

The plan had been adopted on June 22 and was scheduled to run until Oct. 24. Oracle said no shares had been sold under the 10b5-1 arrangement before it was canceled, and Ellison does not have any other plan to sell stock.

Ellison, 82, still controls more than 40% of Oracle, a position that has made him one of the company’s most influential shareholders for decades. He founded the software group in 1977 and has remained closely associated with its strategy and ownership structure.

Oracle’s AI push and market strain

Oracle has been repositioning itself from a traditional enterprise software company into a supplier of artificial intelligence infrastructure. That shift has helped raise its profile with investors, but it has also required heavy spending and left the company carrying a larger debt load.

The stock has fallen about 23% this year, reflecting pressure tied to that transition and broader investor concerns about the balance between growth investment and financial leverage. Ellison’s decision removes a potentially large source of share supply from the market, even if no stock had yet been sold under the plan.

Ellison is also connected to other high-profile media deals through his son, David Ellison, who now leads Paramount Skydance. The elder Ellison helped finance the original Skydance-Paramount combination and is also backing a proposed bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, which faces a state attorneys general lawsuit over antitrust concerns.

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