Larry Ellison, Oracle chairman of board and chief technology officer, delivers a keynote speech at the 2019 Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco on September 16, 2019. Getty Images
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, became the wealthiest person to walk the earth this week. After Hertz announced that it would purchase 100,000 Tesla vehicles to rent out its fleet, Musk's fortune soared to $271 billion. This helped push up the share price of the electric car company.
Musk is not the only billionaire who has made a fortune off Tesla's stock market rally. Larry Ellison, Oracle cofounder and Tesla board member, owns just over 15,000,000 shares of the electric car company. This makes him Tesla's second-largest shareholder after Musk. Ellison's 1.5% stake in Tesla was valued at $15.5 billion on Tuesday.
The Tesla stake Ellison held in Tesla was first revealed at the end of 2018, when Ellison became a Tesla board member. Ellison purchased 3 million Tesla shares in 2018 at an undisclosed cost. These shares, which were valued at nearly $1 billion million as of December 2018, were announced by the company. As a result of the August 2020 5-1 stock split, he now has 15 million shares. His initial investment in December 2018 has increased by more than 1,450%.
He also purchased shares in a limited number, including 6,250 shares worth $958,000 in Tesla's February 2020 secondary stock offering. Ellison also holds 291,000 options, which he received in 2019, and that are worth approximately $280 million.
According to CNBC, Ellison stated that he believes Tesla has a lot more upside in 2018.
Ellison's Tesla stake is approximately 12% of his $129.4 billion fortune. Ellisons 35% stake in Oracle, a database company he cofounded in 1977 and his vast real estate holdings, which include almost the entire Hawaiian island Lanai, make up the majority of Ellisons wealth.
Ellison is not just an investor in Tesla. CNBC reported that Ellison said that he was a friend of Musk when he revealed his Tesla stake in 2018. Ellison joined the board of directors in 2018, after the SEC ordered that two independent directors be appointed by the company as part a settlement over Musk's famous tweet about taking Tesla private for $420 per share. They are still close. Musk posted in December 2020, during the height of the pandemics' winter surge that he flew to Lanai aboard a private jet to seek advice from Ellison.
