American billionaire Larry Ellison loses $15 billion as AI debt fears hit Oracle

American billionaire Larry Ellison lost about $15 billion on paper last week as Oracle Corp. shares fell 9%, caught in a selloff driven by investor fears over how much debt companies are taking on to build artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Oracle closed at $128.23 on Friday, Oct. 16, down 4.6% on the day and down from $141.40 a week earlier. Ellison, Oracle's co-founder, executive chairman and chief technology officer, owns about 1.16 billion shares, according to the company's 2026 proxy statement. At those prices, his stake fell from about $163.7 billion to $148.5 billion over the five trading days, a drop of roughly $15.3 billion. Friday's decline alone took about $7.2 billion off the value of his holding.

The stock has now lost about 61% since its record close of $328.33 on Sept. 10, 2025, the day Oracle shares jumped 36% after the company reported a surge in cloud contracts. Ellison's shares were worth about $380 billion at that close. They are worth roughly $232 billion less today.

Ellison, 82, is now worth about $178 billion, making him the world's eighth-richest person. His fortune has fallen by about $194 billion over the past 12 months. On the day of the September 2025 rally, he briefly passed Elon Musk as the richest person in the world.

AI borrowing worries

The latest slide began on Oct. 14, when Oracle fell 8.8% to $130.55, its steepest drop of the week. That day, shares of CoreWeave, a cloud provider that rents out Nvidia chips to AI developers, sank 15.5% as yields on its bonds due in 2032 touched 15%, a level that signals heavy investor anxiety about a borrower. The concern spread to other companies spending heavily on data centers, including Oracle, Nebius and Dell.

Hotter inflation added to the pressure. U.S. consumer prices rose 3.7% in September from a year earlier, up from 3.4% in August, raising the prospect of another Federal Reserve rate increase and higher borrowing costs. The 10-year Treasury yield ended Friday near 5.09%. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.1% on Friday and about 4.5% over the week.

Oracle has become one of the most heavily indebted companies in the AI build-out. Its long-term debt has climbed above $160 billion, nearly double the level of two years ago, and S&P Global Ratings cut its credit rating to BBB-, the lowest investment grade, in July. The company plans to raise about $40 billion this fiscal year through debt and equity, has guided for $90 billion to $95 billion in capital spending, and reported negative free cash flow of $5.4 billion last quarter.

Investors are also wary of Oracle's exposure to OpenAI, which agreed to buy $300 billion of computing capacity from Oracle as part of the Stargate data center project. Oracle has $664 billion in remaining performance obligations, contracted revenue it has yet to book.

Oracle's market value stood at about $388 billion at Friday's close.

Pledged shares

Ellison has borrowed against part of his stake. As of Sept. 21, he had pledged 413 million Oracle shares as collateral for personal loans used for ventures outside Oracle, according to the proxy statement. Those shares were worth about $53 billion at Friday's close.

In September, a regulatory filing showed Ellison had adopted a plan in June to sell up to 50 million Oracle shares, a block then valued at about $7.5 billion. He cancelled the plan a day after it became public, and no shares were sold under it.

Ellison's family also controls Skydance Corp., the media group run by his son David Ellison that completed its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on Oct. 6. Larry Ellison personally guaranteed part of the equity used to fund the deal.