Oracle was founded in 1977 as a software consulting company, but in recent years, it has pivoted toward artificial intelligence to help customers manage their databases. A focus on AI has helped to boost Oracle’s stock price, which has lifted the fortune of both its investors and company executives, including co-founder, former CEO, and current CTO, Larry Ellison.
As a co-founder, Ellison held a large number of shares when the company went public in 1986, and since then, his stake in Oracle has become significant.
Here’s how many Oracle shares Ellison owns, how much they’re worth, and how he accumulated his stake in the company.
How much of Oracle does Larry Ellison own?
Larry Ellison owned 1.158 billion shares, equating to 38.2% of Oracle, according to the tech company’s 2026 proxy statement, which was released in late September 2026. Those shares were valued at $157 billion as of an early October share price of $135.69.
Related: How much Oracle stock is Larry Ellison using as loan collateral?
Is Larry Ellison the largest individual shareholder of Oracle?
Ellison is the largest shareholder of Oracle. No other executive or individual comes close to Ellison’s ownership. The next biggest owners of Oracle stock are institutional investors.
Oracle’s largest institutional shareholders
Oracle’s largest institutional shareholders are among the world’s largest fund managers.
BlackRock owned 145.35 million shares, or a 4.8% stake, as of the end of June 2026, according to data compiled by Yahoo! Finance. Rounding out the top three among institutional investors, Vanguard Capital Management held a 3.7% stake, and State Street owned 2.6%.
How & when did Larry Ellison accumulate his Oracle stock?
Ellison was a founder of Oracle, which began operations in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories. (The company took up the Oracle branding — after the code name of a CIA project on a database management system worked on by Ellison — in the 1980s.) Oracle went public in 1986, and Ellison, as a founder and CEO since inception, held a significant stake.
In Oracle’s 1994 proxy statement — which was the earliest statement made available by Oracle on its investor relations page of its website — Ellison owned 67.3 million shares, or a 23.5% stake.
Ellison’s stake in Oracle increased significantly over the years through a combination of stock splits and the company’s share repurchase plans. The company conducted its first stock split in 1987 and had its last split in 2000.
Due to those stock splits, a single Oracle share in 1986 would now have been split into 324 shares.
More on Oracle:
- Oracle’s stock buybacks: History & investor impact explained
- Oracle’s stock splits: History & prospects explained
- Oracle’s dividends: History, yield & payout ratio explained
Ellison, for the most part, held onto his shares, although he has sold some from time to time. Despite his occasional stock sales, Ellison was also regularly rewarded with new stock as compensation for meeting the company’s internal performance targets.
Rather than selling large stakes in the company to raise cash, Ellison is well known for taking out personal loans, using Oracle shares as collateral — a move that he has repeated many times over the years.
Borrowing money using Oracle shares as collateral has allowed Ellison to keep his shares (and the voting power they come with) while avoiding paying the capital gains taxes he would have incurred had he sold them.
How much stock does Larry Ellison get as part of his compensation package?
In 2026, Ellison took a base salary of $950,000 for his role as executive chair and chief technology officer. His total compensation, however, was much greater. Stock awards, bonuses, and other incentives pushed his total compensation up to $131 million. His option award for the year amounted to $117 million.
Related: Larry Ellison’s net worth: The Oracle founder’s wealth & income
