Larry Ellison Loses $6 Billion as Oracle Shares Sink 54% on AI Spending Fears
Updated
Updated · Forbes · Aug 15
Larry Ellison Loses $6 Billion as Oracle Shares Sink 54% on AI Spending Fears
2 articles · Updated · Forbes · Aug 15
Summary
$6 billion vanished from Larry Ellison’s fortune on Friday, dropping Oracle’s chairman to No. 8 on the global rich list at $192.6 billion, behind Nvidia’s Jensen Huang at $194.4 billion.
Oracle’s stock slide drove the drop: shares fell about 54% from just above $250 on June 1 to a July 28 low of $114.50, before recovering to $150.52 by Friday.
Investor concern intensified after Oracle said it planned to raise $40 billion through debt and equity while lifting capital expenditures 162% to $55.7 billion, with spending projected to exceed $95 billion by fiscal 2027.
Analysts and S&P Global have warned the AI buildout could strain Oracle’s finances, with Bank of America noting more than 50% of remaining performance obligations are tied to OpenAI.
Oracle’s market value has shrunk by $443 billion from its September peak to $433.5 billion, underscoring how Wall Street has shifted from viewing the company as an AI winner to questioning the cost of that expansion.