AI capital expenditures soaring trigger stock price plunge Oracle Corporation (ORCL.US) founder Ellison's wealth evaporates nearly $25 billion.

Just three months ago, Larry Ellison briefly topped the global rich list, but now, due to the historic plunge in Oracle Corporation (ORCL.US) stock prices, his net worth has shrunk by $24.9 billion in just one day. On Thursday, Oracle Corporation's stock price plummeted by nearly 11%. The company's latest financial report showed that capital spending on AI data center construction continues to soar, but revenue conversion speed has not met investor expectations, causing concerns in the market about the pace of commercialization of its AI infrastructure. This drop also caused the 81-year-old Ellison to drop from second to third place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ellison's massive loss comes at a time when he has promised to provide funding for his son David Ellison's $108 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (WB.US). As Ellison's Paramount Skydance (PSKY.US) lost in the competition for ownership of Warner Bros. Discovery to Netflix, the company chose to directly submit an all-cash bid of $30 per share to shareholders this week, with financing including $41 billion in new equity funds supported by the Ellison family and RedBird Capital. Paramount hinted that the $30 offer may not be the final bid, and market expectations suggest that the battle with Netflix will escalate further. Although Ellison still has enough wealth to acquire Warner Bros. multiple times, the structure of this acquisition may increase his cash pressure. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows that he currently has about $34.8 billion in cash and equivalents, mainly from past Oracle Corporation divestment profits. However, some of these assets belong to categories with lower liquidity such as real estate and art, making it difficult for outsiders to estimate the size of funds he can immediately access. In addition, as of September 19, 2025, Oracle Corporation's proxy statement showed that approximately 30% of Ellison's Oracle Corporation shares had been pledged for personal debt, an increase of about 25% from last year. Despite the drastic drop on Thursday, the market value of Ellison's Oracle Corporation shares still stands at $202.8 billion, but doubts about its AI strategy are growing. Although Oracle Corporation has been involved in cloud infrastructure for over a decade, it only truly became a significant player in the AI wave in the past two years. This year, the company announced a $300 billion compute deal with OpenAI and jointly participated in the $500 billion Stargate super-large-scale data center project. However, the company's capital spending surged to $12 billion last quarter, and the market is becoming increasingly uneasy about its "spending speed far exceeding monetization speed." Oracle Corporation's credit default swap costs have climbed to a more than two-year high, and Morgan Stanley predicts that its adjusted net debt will nearly triple from the current $100 billion by the 2028 fiscal year. On September 10, Oracle Corporation's stock price surged by 36% due to explosive performance and raised cloud business guidance, marking the largest single-day increase since 1992. Ellison's wealth skyrocketed by $89 billion that day, breaking the record on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and briefly surpassing Musk to become the world's richest person. But now, Oracle Corporation's stock price has fallen back by about 40% from the high point. Even after today's significant decline, Ellison still has $94.9 billion more than a year ago, and market volatility highlights the transformation pressure faced by tech giants in the AI capital-intensive cycle.