Topline
Oracle shares hit a 2026 intraday high Monday, extending a furious late-May rally that has recast the database pioneer as a marquee AI-infrastructure player and boosted the fortune of cofounder Larry Ellison, who holds roughly 40% of the company.
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 21: Oracle co-founder, CTO and Executive Chairman Larry Ellison speaks during a news conference with U.S. President Donald Trump on January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
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Key Facts
Oracle traded as high as $244 Monday, after surging about 11% Friday to cap software’s strongest month since 2001.
The company has pivoted from a mature software vendor into a major player in the AI boom, renting compute power to the largest AI developers like OpenAI.
Oracle’s move was partly a recovery as its stock had fallen about 35% from its late-October high due to a $50 billion plan to expand its AI capabilities, a revenue miss and reports of stalled financing and slipping timelines on its OpenAI data center buildout.
Wall Street has bolstered the stock in recent days, with Wedbush, Arete and Oppenheimer all lifting their price targets, citing Oracle’s locked-in customer contracts and its deepening role powering OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia and Meta.
The rise comes amid a sector-wide rally, with iShares’ Software ETF rising roughly 21% in May—its biggest gain in 25 years—as fears that AI tools would gut traditional software business models reversed.
Key Background
Larry Ellison cofounded Oracle in 1977 and built it from a database upstart into one of the most valuable software companies in the world. His fortune is no longer a pure tech story. His son David Ellison runs Paramount Skydance, whose roughly $110 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery—backed by a committed Ellison-family and RedBird Capital investment—would consolidate franchises from Harry Potter to the DC Universe, alongside CBS, CNN and HBO, under an Ellison-backed umbrella. Separately, Oracle’s roughly 15% stake in TikTok’s U.S. business ties the elder Ellison directly to the country’s dominant short-video platform. The combination has pulled the family into a broader debate over media consolidation, foreign investment and the political reach of billionaire dealmakers. Outside of Oracle and Tesla stock, Ellison also owns the Indian Wells tennis tournament and roughly 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai.
Big Number
$100 billion. That’s Ellison’s single-day wealth gain during Oracle’s September 2025 surge, which was the largest one-day increase in personal net worth ever recorded as his fortune topped a staggering $400 billion.
Contra
Skeptics warn the rally is built on a mountain of spending. Oracle is burning through cash and carries more than $124 billion in long-term debt, and much of the bull case depends on the company actually delivering the AI data centers it has promised, as well as on customers like OpenAI growing fast enough to pay for them.
