Larry Ellison has put another enormous chunk of his Oracle fortune behind personal borrowing.
The Oracle co-founder and executive chairman has pledged an additional 67 million Oracle shares as collateral for personal loans, bringing the value of the newly pledged stock to roughly $9.2 billion based on Oracle’s September 25 closing price of $137.10 a share.
The disclosure offers a glimpse into how one of the world’s wealthiest technology executives is using his enormous equity holdings while simultaneously remaining deeply involved in one of the biggest media transactions in U.S. corporate history.
The additional pledge represents about a 19% increase from the number of Oracle shares Larry Ellison had pledged a year earlier. His total pledged shares now amount to roughly 36% of his Oracle holdings, according to a proxy filing reported by Bloomberg and other outlets.
That does not mean Ellison has sold the shares. Pledging stock as collateral means the shares remain his property, but lenders can have rights over the collateral under the terms of the loans.
What exactly has Larry Ellison pledged?
Larry Ellison owns approximately 1.16 billion Oracle shares.
Oracle’s latest disclosure indicates that he had pledged about 346 million shares as collateral for personal indebtedness as of September 19, 2025. The additional 67 million shares bring the pledged amount to roughly 413 million shares.
At Oracle’s $137.10 closing price on September 25, the newly added 67 million shares had a market value of approximately $9.2 billion.
The increase is significant in absolute terms, but it is also notable because of how concentrated Ellison’s personal wealth remains in Oracle stock.
A large portion of his wealth is tied to the company he co-founded. Using shares as collateral allows him to access financing without necessarily selling the underlying stock.
That distinction matters.
A sale would reduce his ownership and create a taxable transaction. A pledge can provide access to borrowed capital while allowing the owner to retain the shares and their potential future appreciation.
Why would Larry Ellison use Oracle shares as loan collateral?
Ultra-wealthy founders frequently hold much of their wealth in company stock rather than cash.
For someone with Ellison’s concentration in Oracle, borrowing against shares can provide liquidity without requiring a large stock sale.
Oracle has disclosed for years that Ellison’s pledged shares secure personal term loans. Earlier company filings said the shares were not pledged for margin accounts and were not being used to hedge the economic risk of owning Oracle stock.
The company’s current pledging policy specifically allows Ellison to continue pledging Oracle securities as collateral to secure or guarantee indebtedness, even though Oracle generally prohibits its other officers and directors from doing so. The policy requires oversight of the arrangements by the company’s Governance Committee.
That makes Ellison an unusual exception inside Oracle.
The policy does not mean that Oracle is guaranteeing Ellison’s loans. Rather, it permits Ellison to use his own Oracle shares as collateral under specified conditions.
The Warner Bros. connection
The timing of the increased pledge is particularly notable because of Ellison’s role in financing his family’s involvement in Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Paramount Skydance agreed in February 2026 to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in a transaction valued at approximately $110 billion in enterprise value. The transaction included $47 billion of equity financing backed by the Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners.
The financing structure subsequently involved a syndication of equity commitments to institutional investors, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, an Abu Dhabi investment vehicle and the Qatar Investment Authority, alongside entities connected with the Ellison family and other investors.
The transaction has since moved from proposal to completion. Reuters reported on September 21 that Paramount Skydance had completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery after settling litigation with a group of states and the Writers Guild of America.
That makes Ellison’s latest Oracle pledge particularly interesting from a financing perspective, although the disclosure itself describes the shares as collateral for personal loans. It does not establish that every dollar borrowed against those shares was used specifically for the Warner Bros. transaction.
Ellison’s Oracle fortune remains at the center of his financial strategy
There is another reason the pledge has attracted attention: Ellison’s enormous Oracle stake gives him an unusually deep pool of publicly traded wealth to borrow against.
Paramount’s transaction documents have previously identified the Ellison Trust as holding approximately 1.16 billion Oracle shares. Those shares represented a substantial portion of the financial resources available to meet commitments connected with Paramount’s Warner Bros. bid.
This creates an interesting financial picture.
The same Oracle stock that underpins much of Ellison’s personal fortune can also function as collateral for borrowing, while his family has used substantial capital commitments to support a major media acquisition.
But there is an important risk that comes with any stock-backed borrowing arrangement.
The value of the collateral can rise and fall with the share price. A significant decline in Oracle shares can reduce the value supporting a loan and potentially create additional financial pressure depending on the terms of the borrowing.
There is no indication in the latest disclosure that Ellison is currently facing such a problem.
Oracle’s policy gives Larry Ellison a special exception
Perhaps the most eye-catching detail is not the $9.2 billion valuation itself but the fact that Ellison is allowed to pledge Oracle shares at all.
Oracle’s pledging policy generally prohibits company officers and directors from using Oracle securities as collateral for personal borrowing.
Larry Ellison, however, has an explicit exception.
The company’s proxy materials say Ellison may continue to pledge Oracle securities to secure or guarantee indebtedness, while prohibiting him from holding Oracle securities in a margin account. The Governance Committee reviews his pledging arrangements and assesses potential risks to Oracle and its shareholders.
The exception reflects Ellison’s unusual status at Oracle.
He is the company’s founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer and largest shareholder. His ownership is far greater than the minimum stock ownership requirements that apply to executives.
Oracle has historically said its board considers factors including the amount of pledged stock, the terms of the loans, Oracle’s stock price and Ellison’s ability to repay the loans without relying on the pledged shares.
Oracle also disclosed huge awards for its co-CEOs
The same compensation disclosures have drawn attention for another reason.
Oracle’s co-CEOs, Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia, are receiving a combined stock-option award package valued at approximately $870.4 million.
Magouyrk’s award is valued at about $621.7 million, while Sicilia’s comes to approximately $248.7 million.
Ellison is also receiving a new award after not receiving an award in the previous two fiscal years. His latest package is valued at approximately $117.8 million.
These are reported award values, not equivalent to cash sitting in the executives’ bank accounts. The eventual economic value of stock options can depend heavily on Oracle’s share price and the terms attached to the awards.
Oracle promoted Magouyrk and Sicilia to co-CEO roles in September 2025, with the company describing their appointments as part of a leadership transition while Ellison continued as executive chairman and CTO.
Larry Ellison recently cancelled a planned Oracle stock sale
The new pledge disclosure also comes shortly after another notable decision involving Ellison’s Oracle holdings.
On September 12, Oracle announced that Ellison had cancelled a 10b5-1 trading plan that would have allowed him to sell Oracle stock. Oracle said no shares had been sold under the plan and that Ellison had no other plans to sell Oracle stock at that time.
That puts the latest development in sharper perspective.
Rather than an outright sale, Ellison has now disclosed a larger amount of Oracle stock being used as collateral for personal borrowing.
For an investor following Oracle, the distinction is crucial. A pledge does not automatically reduce Ellison’s ownership, but it does place a substantial block of shares within a lending arrangement whose terms are not fully visible from the headline value alone.
What the pledge does and does not mean
The $9.2 billion figure can sound like Ellison has somehow lost $9.2 billion in Oracle stock.
That is not what happened.
The 67 million shares remain shares of Oracle stock. They have simply been pledged as security for loans.
The more meaningful takeaway is the scale of Ellison’s financial leverage and the extraordinary concentration of his wealth in Oracle.
His latest disclosure shows how a founder can use a huge equity position in several different ways at once: as a long-term ownership stake, as a source of potential liquidity and, under Oracle’s special policy exception, as collateral for personal borrowing.
For Oracle shareholders, the key issue is therefore not the headline $9.2 billion alone.
It is the combination of the size of Ellison’s pledged position, the company’s exceptional treatment of its founder under its pledging policy, and the broader financial commitments surrounding his family’s business activities.
And with more than $400 billion of Oracle shares, at market prices, still representing an enormous personal stake, Ellison’s relationship with the company’s stock remains one of the most consequential parts of his financial empire.