Oracle founder Ellison cancels plan to sell 50 million shares

Technology giant Oracle said today that company founder Larry Ellison has canceled plans to sell 50 million Oracle shares. The holdings are valued at US$7.5 billion.

Reuters reported that Oracle stated: "No Oracle stock was sold under this plan, and he has no other plans to sell his Oracle holdings."

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Ellison set up the transaction plan to sell up to 50 million Oracle shares on June 22. It was originally expected to be completed on October 24, but it could be terminated early under certain circumstances. The market value of these shares was approximately US$8.75 billion at the time, but Oracle's stock price has fallen 16% so far. Ellison currently holds about 40% of the company's shares.

As a cloud technology company, Oracle is facing pressure from investors, mainly because of large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) investments related to customers such as OpenAI, which is putting pressure on the company's balance sheet. The company has recently launched large-scale layoffs in order to save cash. Yesterday, it revealed that the costs related to layoffs have reached an estimated US$2.8 billion, US$700 million more than the previous estimate.

The termination of the share sale plan may help alleviate the concerns of some investors. Oracle's stock price fell 1.7% yesterday after announcing a decline in gross profit margin, and investors' concerns about its spending plans also increased.

Oracle said in February this year that it expected to raise US$45 billion to US$50 billion in 2026 through a combination of debt and equity to expand cloud infrastructure to meet the needs of customers including AMD, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, TikTok and xAI. (Compiled by: Xu Chongzhe) 1150913