Larry Ellison holds tight to his Oracle shares. The 81-year-old co-founder owns roughly 41 percent of the company he built from scratch decades ago. That stake, around 1.16 billion shares as of mid-2025, has powered a fortune that briefly topped Elon Musk’s last year and still ranks among the world’s largest.
Yet Ellison doesn’t sell. He borrows instead. SEC filings show he has pledged hundreds of millions of those shares as collateral for personal loans. One recent tally put pledged shares at 277 million. Their value exceeded $82 billion at the time. The approach lets him fund lavish spending and new ventures without diluting his control. Control matters.
Now that grip faces fresh tests. Ellison and his family have plunged into Hollywood with the Paramount-Skydance combination and an audacious push for Warner Bros. Discovery. The latest move came in late May when the family privately vowed to limit debt at the enlarged media group. Bloomberg first reported the commitment on May 27, 2026. David Ellison, Larry’s son and Paramount’s chief executive, made the verbal assurance to ratings analysts. It soon went public in a regulatory filing. The pledge helped secure a better credit rating than analysts initially feared for the debt-heavy deal.
S&P Global Ratings noted the family’s backstop as a powerful factor. Without it, the combined company’s rating would have dropped two notches. With the vow, it fell only one, landing at BB. “It was a verbal comment from David Ellison,” Naveen Sarma, S&P’s sector lead for U.S. media and telecom, told Bloomberg. “I think all the agencies, and certainly us, insisted on a public disclosure as well.” The family controls Paramount. That fact gives the assurance real weight.
The Warner bid itself tells a similar story. Last December Paramount offered $108 billion for the whole of Warner Bros. Discovery. Equity financing totaled roughly $40.4 billion. Warner’s board initially balked. It worried that a revocable family trust backed the money. Limited recourse, they said. So Larry Ellison stepped forward with a personal guarantee. The New York Times detailed the shift on Dec. 22, 2025. David Ellison declared in a statement that “Paramount has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to acquiring WBD” and urged the board to “preserve and strengthen an iconic Hollywood treasure.”
But. The numbers remain staggering. The transaction would load the merged entity with about $50 billion in debt. Paramount also lined up $47 billion in equity for the Warner side plus another $24 billion expected from Middle Eastern funds. Hollywood has voiced loud opposition. Creditors worry too. Still the Ellisons press ahead. Success would hand them stakes in CBS, CNN, HBO, Warner Bros. studios, Paramount Pictures and more. Add Oracle’s 15 percent position in the new U.S. TikTok venture and the family’s reach spans software, social media, news and film. The Wall Street Journal captured the breadth in a September 2025 profile, calling Ellison “more interesting than ever at 81” as he sits at the center of AI, entertainment and potential TikTok ownership.
Oracle itself supplies the financial fuel. The company’s cloud and database business has ridden the AI wave. Revenue projections from CEO Safra Catz have soared. One forecast eyed $144 billion in several years. That optimism lifted Oracle shares dramatically in 2025. Ellison’s paper wealth jumped by tens of billions in single sessions. He briefly became the richest person on the planet. Forbes and Bloomberg tracked those swings. Yet the fortune remains tied to one stock. Most other tech founders have sold down over time. Ellison has not. His 41 percent stake dwarfs Zuckerberg’s share of Meta or Bezos’s remaining Amazon holdings, CNBC observed in a September 2025 examination of his unusual wealth management.
So how does he spend without selling? Loans against the pledged shares provide liquidity. Ellison once described a multibillion-dollar credit line as dry powder for big purchases. He has bought an entire Hawaiian island, built extravagant homes and funded varied interests. More recently the focus turned philanthropic. He pledged 95 percent of his fortune to good causes, with emphasis on an institute tackling disease, hunger and climate. The New York Times explored that shift in August 2025. The structure mixes for-profit and research elements. Details stay complex. But the intent appears genuine after years of dealmaking and sailing trophies.
Family plays an outsized role. David Ellison runs Paramount and drives the Warner pursuit. Larry provides the financial muscle and, when needed, the personal signature. Their partnership echoes Larry’s long-standing preference for keeping authority close. He stepped down as Oracle CEO years ago yet remains executive chairman and chief technology officer. His son has taken operational duties at the software giant too. The arrangement preserves the founder’s vision. It also exposes the empire to concentrated risk. A sharp drop in Oracle’s price or a misstep in the media bets could ripple fast.
Recent market moves show the tension. Oracle shares gave back some gains in early 2026. Ellison slipped in the billionaire rankings as a result, Forbes reported in January. TikTok’s U.S. restructuring, where Oracle holds a meaningful stake and data responsibilities, has yet to deliver clear financial uplift. Investors appear wary of the heavy capital spending on AI infrastructure. Credit default swaps on Oracle debt spiked at points last year, Bloomberg noted.
And still Ellison vows to hold. The private assurance on Paramount debt mirrors earlier promises to Warner executives. It signals the family will inject more equity if leverage climbs too high. Such statements reassure analysts even as they highlight the deal’s ambition. Media remains a tough business. Streaming competition from Netflix stays fierce. Advertising cycles swing. The $110 billion combination, if completed, would create one of the largest entertainment groups. Success hinges on cost discipline, content strength and the Ellison name.
Oracle’s AI contracts, including major work with OpenAI, provide a counterweight. The company booked one of the largest computing deals in recent memory. Those wins keep the core business expanding. They also justify the founder’s steadfast ownership. Few founders maintain such a large position this late in their careers. Ellison’s approach defies conventional dilution wisdom. It has made him extraordinarily rich. It now underwrites a second act in industries far from databases.
Observers watch closely. Will the media bets pay off? Can the family manage massive debt without selling Oracle shares? The answers will test decades of accumulated power. For now Larry Ellison keeps his enlarged stake. He lends his fortune and his word to new frontiers. The results will shape not only his legacy but the future contours of technology, entertainment and perhaps even global information flow.
Markets have rewarded the conviction so far. Oracle stock posted its best year in decades in 2024 and continued strong into 2025 on AI enthusiasm. Ellison’s net worth has swung from below $200 billion to peaks near $400 billion. The volatility is real. The commitment appears firmer. Private vows have become public commitments. The enlarged empire grows. And the man at its center shows no sign of letting go.
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