Larry Ellison, Oracle Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, delivers the keynote address at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on September 16, 2019.
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oracle Founder Larry Ellison has entered into a transaction plan that allows him to sell up to 50 million shares of the software company’s stock, worth $7.5 billion at current prices.
Ellison adopted the plan on June 22 and is scheduled to close on October 24, according to a regulatory filing released Friday.
This is an unusual move for Ellison. Mr. Ellison retains a significant portion of the company he founded in 1977. Mr. Ellison controls more than 40% of Oracle and would still own 1.1 billion shares even if he sold all of the shares in the plan, according to FactSet.
Since the turn of the century, Ellison has never sold more than 25,000 shares of Oracle stock, according to FactSet. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Ellison, 82, helped transform Oracle from a traditional software maker into a leading company in artificial intelligence infrastructure. Oracle reported earnings on Thursday, beating expectations as cloud infrastructure revenue rose 121% year over year.
But to get there, Oracle had to take on huge amounts of debt, raising concerns among investors and causing the stock to drop about 20% this year.
Ellison, the world’s seventh richest person, financed the 2025 merger of his son David Ellison’s production company Skydance and Paramount.
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