A sharp rise in AI capital spending triggered a sharp drop in stock prices; Oracle (ORCL.US) founder Ellison's net worth evaporated by nearly $25 billion

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Larry Ellison, who only briefly reached the top of the “richest man in the world” three months ago, has now shrunk by 24.9 billion US dollars in one day due to the historic collapse in Oracle (ORCL.US) stock prices.

On Thursday, Oracle's stock price plummeted by nearly 11%. The company's latest financial report shows that its capital investment in AI data center construction continues to soar, but the speed of revenue transformation has fallen short of investors' expectations, causing the market to worry about the pace of commercialization of its AI infrastructure. This drop also dropped 81-year-old Ellison from 2nd place to 3rd place on the Bloomberg Billionaires list.

Ellison's huge losses coincided with his promise to fund his son David Ellison's $108 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Explore (WBD.US). Since Ellison's Paramount Skydance (PSKY.US) lost to Netflix in the competition for ownership of Warner Bros. Discovery, the company chose to submit an all-cash offer of $30 per share directly to shareholders this week. The financing behind this includes $41 billion in new equity capital, supported by the Ellison Family and RedBird Capital.

Paramount, on the other hand, hinted that $30 may not be the final offer, and the market expects the tug-of-war with Netflix to escalate further.

Although Ellison still has enough wealth to buy Warner multiple times, the structure of this acquisition may increase its cash pressure. According to the Bloomberg Regal Index, he currently has about US$34.8 billion in cash and equivalents on his books, mainly from past Oracle holdings reduction proceeds. However, some of these assets are in categories with low liquidity, such as real estate and works of art, and it is difficult for the outside world to determine the amount of capital he can immediately use.

Furthermore, according to Oracle's proxy documents as of September 19, 2025, about 30% of Ellison's Oracle holdings have been pledged for personal debt, an increase of about 25% over last year.

Although the market value of Oracle shares in Ellison's hands is still as high as $202.8 billion after Thursday's sharp fall, market doubts about its AI strategy are growing.

Although Oracle has been deploying cloud infrastructure for over ten years, it wasn't until nearly two years that it actually became an important participant in the AI wave. This year, the company announced that it had reached a computing power cooperation agreement with OpenAI totaling 300 billion US dollars and jointly participated in the 500 billion US dollar Stargate hyperscale data center project.

However, the company's capital expenditure soared to $12 billion last quarter, and the market is becoming increasingly uneasy about its “spending speed far exceeding the speed of monetization.” The cost of Oracle's debt default insurance has climbed to a high level in more than two years. Morgan Stanley expects its adjusted net debt to “triple” from the current 100 billion US dollars by fiscal year 2028.

On September 10 of this year, Oracle's stock price soared 36% due to explosive performance and an increase in cloud business guidelines, the biggest one-day increase since 1992. Ellison's wealth surged by $89 billion on the same day, setting a new historical record in the Bloomberg Regal Index and briefly surpassing Musk to become the richest man in the world.

But now, Oracle's stock price has fallen about 40% from its high point. Even after experiencing today's sharp contraction, Ellison's net worth is still 94.9 billion US dollars more than a year ago, and market fluctuations have highlighted the transformation pressure faced by tech giants in the AI capital-intensive cycle.