Ellison Pledges Oracle, Tesla, SpaceX Stock for Son's $81B Warner Deal

Oracle (ORCL) founder Larry Ellison has widened his stock-backed borrowing to help finance his son David's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, and he has dropped a plan to sell roughly $7.5 billion of Oracle stock. Filings reported by The Wall Street Journal show Ellison pledged shares in Tesla (TSLA), SpaceX and Paramount Skydance this year as collateral for bank loans, in addition to Oracle shares. The summary supplied for this article lists Citigroup (C), JPMorgan (JPM), UBS, HSBC and BNP Paribas as lenders. Oracle's proxy statement, filed September 25, shows 413 million Oracle shares pledged, up from 346 million a year earlier.

What the filings show

The proxy says the pledged shares secure personal term loans, none sit in margin accounts, and the loans fund only outside ventures. It does not say which ventures. By our calculation, 67 million additional shares is a 19.4% rise, and the liens tied to specific banks grew nearly threefold, from 30 million to 87 million shares. The 87 million and 30 million figures come from the summary supplied for this article, and we could not confirm them in the filings we reviewed. Bloomberg valued the 67 million added shares at about $9.2 billion at Oracle's September 25 close of $137.10, and said the pledged stake is about 36% of his roughly 1.16 billion shares. The same price implies about $56.6 billion for all 413 million shares by our calculation, a little below the $58 billion in the summary, which likely reflects a different price.

The Warner Bros. Discovery link

The WSJ report said the pledges, which cover Tesla, SpaceX and Paramount Skydance shares as well as Oracle, were made to borrow more from banks to help pay for David Ellison's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. Trade coverage says Paramount Skydance, controlled by the Ellisons, completed the purchase on October 6 at just over $31 a share in cash, a value of about $81 billion for the shares and nearly $111 billion with debt. The same coverage reports $47 billion of new equity, about $24 billion of it from three Gulf sovereign funds, and a $40.4 billion personal guarantee from Larry Ellison dating to December 2025. We could not confirm those deal details in primary filings, and Oracle's proxy does not link the loans to the deal.

The abandoned share sale

On September 11, Oracle disclosed a plan, set up in June, for Ellison to sell up to 50 million Oracle shares, valued at about $7.5 billion at recent prices in the summary supplied. Oracle said the next day that he had cancelled it and sold no shares, according to coverage of the filing. Pairing the two steps, a canceled sale and a larger pledge, suggests a preference: borrow against the stock instead of selling it.

How much he could borrow

The $5.7 billion figure is a theoretical ceiling, not a reported loan. Banks usually lend less against a very large block of one stock, because selling it would move the price. The pledged shares across all lenders are much larger than the 87 million in specific liens, so this does not cap his total borrowing.

Tax strategy and governance

Borrowing against shares lets an owner raise cash without selling, which avoids realizing a taxable gain. Oracle bars officers and directors from pledging company shares, with Ellison the only exception. According to the proxy, a board committee reviews his arrangements each quarter, it concluded they do not pose a material risk to Oracle or its stockholders, and he has the financial capacity to repay without selling the pledged stock. The pledges also tie his borrowing to Oracle's share price, a point the AI spending and debt worries around the company make more important. For context on market rates, see our report on the 10-year Treasury yield.

Sources: Oracle proxy statement via SEC EDGAR, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal report of October 20 as summarized by media aggregators. We did not open the WSJ article or the bank filings. The lender names, the 87 million and 30 million share figures and the 50% loan-to-value illustration come from the summary supplied for this article. We have no verified current price for ORCL, TSLA or the banks, so none is quoted.