Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) founder Larry Ellison has adopted a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan that could authorize the sale of up to 50 million shares of the technology company. According to a regulatory filing released on September 12, the plan was adopted on June 22 and remains in effect through October 24. Based on Oracle's press-time share price of approximately $150, the authorized sale could be worth roughly $7.5 billion.
The development is significant because Ellison, Oracle's executive chairman and chief technology officer, has rarely sold large portions of his stake in the company. Even if he executes all 50 million share sales, he would retain approximately 1.1 billion Oracle shares, maintaining ownership of more than 40% of the company.
The newly disclosed plan represents a notable shift for Ellison, who has traditionally held most of his Oracle position and relied on borrowing rather than stock sales to access liquidity. His historical transactions have involved relatively small amounts of stock, making the possibility of a multibillion-dollar sale one of the largest insider trading developments involving Oracle in recent years.
Rule 10b5-1 plans are commonly used by executives to schedule stock sales in advance and avoid accusations of trading on nonpublic information. Investors often monitor such plans closely for signals about insider sentiment, as large insider sales can pressure a stock, particularly when they involve a founder and major shareholder.
The potential sale comes as Oracle pushes aggressively into artificial intelligence infrastructure and cloud computing. In its latest quarter, revenue rose 30% year-over-year to $19.3 billion, while total cloud revenue jumped 62% to $11.6 billion. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) grew 121% to $7.4 billion, reflecting strong enterprise demand for AI computing capacity.
The company signed more than $30 billion in new AI cloud contracts during the quarter, helping push its remaining performance obligations (RPO) to a record $664 billion, up $209 billion from a year earlier. Despite strong performance, Oracle's AI expansion comes with high costs, with the company increasing borrowing and planning additional fundraising to support large-scale data center investments.
