Ellison Scraps $7.5 Billion Oracle Share Sale After One-Day Reversal

Fifty million shares, gone from the market in the space of a single business day. That's the trajectory of Larry Ellison's stock sale plan: adopted quietly in June, disclosed in a regulatory filing on a Friday, and dead by the following Monday.

Under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted June 22, 2026, the Executive Chair and Chief Technology Officer could have sold up to 50 million shares through October 24. "No Oracle stock was sold under that plan, and he has no other plans to sell any of his Oracle stock," Oracle said in confirming the reversal. The company did not offer a reason for the change in plans.

The timing matters more than the silence. Ellison holds roughly 40% of the company, so even a scheduled, pre-cleared sale of this size tends to sit over a stock like a low ceiling, reminding investors that more supply could hit the market on any given week. Pulling it removes that overhang entirely. Oracle stock had fallen roughly 16% to 18% since the plan was adopted in late June, and a person close to Ellison said he views the shares as undervalued. Selling into that slide would have locked in a discount on a stake worth tens of billions.

The backdrop is a company spending at a pace few software vendors ever have. Fiscal 2026 capex surged to $55.7 billion, driving free cash flow to –$23.7 billion, and Oracle plans roughly $40 billion in new debt and equity for fiscal 2027 to support continued AI build-out. That spending underwrites a cloud backlog that has ballooned, with one analysis noting Oracle's AI cloud business exploded 121% year over year, pushing Remaining Performance Obligations to $664B and full-year revenue guidance to $90B. Wall Street has rewarded and punished that bet in roughly equal measure over the past twelve months, and Oracle stock is down 22% since the beginning of the year as of this weekend.

None of that context explains why Ellison walked away from his own sale plan after just one day on the books. Oracle isn't saying. But for a founder who has historically sold very little stock, an unusual plan followed by an abrupt cancellation reads, at minimum, as a vote of confidence at a moment when the market needed one.