In September 2025, Larry Ellison was briefly the richest person in the world. Oracle (ORCL) stock surged on reports of a $300 billion computing deal linked to OpenAI’s Stargate project, and Ellison’s fortune peaked near $393 billion.
A year later, Oracle shares have fallen about 62% from their September 2025 high. Ellison’s net worth has also dropped by roughly $194 billion, and he now ranks around eighth on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a fortune of about $182 billion at the time of writing.
Ellison owns about 40% of Oracle, which is why his wealth moves so much with the stock’s swings.
Also read: OpenAI CFO offers calming message amid AI slowdown fears
How Oracle’s AI pivot turned into a huge wipeout
Oracle mainly sells cloud services and database software to governments and large companies. However, over the past year, it has focused more on renting out AI computing power to firms such as OpenAI. Because of that, the stock rose. But then it also fell afterward.
In December 2025, Oracle said it expected weaker software sales, and the company also said it would spend far more on data centers than Wall Street expected.
In response, Ellison lost about $25 billion of his wealth in a single day. Then in June 2026, Oracle fell almost 20% in one week, its worst weekly drop since 2001.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has lost roughly $194 billion in net worth over the past year as Oracle shares collapsed from their October 2025 peak.
Oracle’s heavy debt and a credit downgrade
Oracle borrowed a lot of money to pay for its AI push.
The company’s total debt is now roughly $169 billion, Yahoo Finance reported. And because of that debt, S&P Global cut Oracle’s credit rating this year.
Michael Burry, the investor who called the housing crash before 2008, has been betting against Oracle. “Oracle didn’t need to do this,” Burry said about the company piling on debt for the large OpenAI deal, Yahoo Finance reported.
The OpenAI concentration keeps Wall Street nervous
A big part of Oracle’s reported $664 billion backlog of future contracts is tied to OpenAI. So if OpenAI reduces its spending or runs short on cash, Oracle could be stuck with data centers that are hard to fill with other customers.
Melius Research also warned that Oracle might not be able to keep up with its spending plans if OpenAI or Anthropic ask for more capacity than Oracle can afford to build, Reuters reported.
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Veteran tech analyst Jack Gold told Techstrong AI that “Oracle is betting big on the need for AI compute and so is investing heavily in ramping its cloud services capability with massive investment in AI systems from NVIDIA and others.
“This has made investors nervous that in a downturn, Oracle’s normally stellar finances and margins could be negatively affected,” Gold added. “As a result, they have been selling off Oracle stock. With Larry Ellison still being a major stockholder, this has negatively affected his net worth.”
What this slide really means for ORCL shareholders now
Oracle’s total revenue increased by about 30% to $19.3 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, and its cloud infrastructure revenue grew 121% year over year, according to Oracle‘s earnings release.
Oracle now trades at about 15.7 times forward earnings, cheaper than the broader tech sector, which is near 21. The stock also has a 12-month average Wall Street price target of about $249. That suggests possible major gains from its Oct. 20 close of $131.14.
For investors, I would suggest that you keep any position small and watch the next earnings report for any signs that the OpenAI deal is paying off.
