Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has canceled a trading plan that would have allowed him to sell up to 50 million Oracle shares worth approximately $7.5 billion, just one day after the arrangement became public in a regulatory filing. Oracle confirmed Saturday that no stock was sold under the plan and that Ellison currently has no other plans to sell his Oracle holdings.
The plan had been adopted on June 22, when the stake was worth about $8.75 billion, and was set to run through October 24. Oracle shares have since fallen roughly 16%, reducing the value to about $7.5 billion. ORCL stock fell another 1.74% on Friday after Oracle reported narrowing gross margins, adding to a decline of roughly 20% in 2026.
Ellison controls about 40% of Oracle and remains its largest single shareholder. Even if the full sale had gone through, he would still have held approximately 1.1 billion shares. The planned sale had drawn attention because Ellison has rarely sold Oracle stock in recent decades, with FactSet data showing he has never sold more than 25,000 shares at one time since the start of the century.
The reversal comes as Oracle is investing heavily in AI infrastructure, including work with OpenAI. The company’s cloud infrastructure revenue grew 121% year over year in the latest quarter, but rising AI capital expenditures have pressured margins and pushed Oracle deeper into debt. Oracle has also increased its estimated workforce reduction costs to $2.8 billion, up by $700 million from its previous estimate, after cutting thousands of jobs.
On Mad Money, Jim Cramer highlighted Oracle’s revenue backlog as a key metric, saying the company now has about $332 billion in contracted business, compared with $99 billion two years ago. The canceled share sale may ease some investor concerns about insider confidence, though Oracle’s stock remains under pressure from AI spending and margin questions.
