Larry Ellison holds a more than $1 billion stake in Tesla, news that has been confirmed by regulatory filings and reported by numerous sources, including the Financial Times.
Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle, holds three million shares of the car company. He previously stated that Tesla (TSLA) was his second-largest investment. Ellison has also called Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk a “close friend.”
Ellison joined Tesla’s board in December, following a ruling by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the electric carmaker must identify a replacement to hold Musk’s seat on the company board. The deal settles fraud charges related to Musk’s tweets about taking Tesla private back in August 2018.
Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018
The SEC alleged that Musk “knew or was reckless in not knowing” that his tweets were not accurate and true. As such, his false and misleading statements violated the 1934 Securities Exchange Act.
Tesla’s board of 11 includes three executives who are women, following a new mandate in California that stipulates gender diversity quotas must be met on the boards of publicly-traded companies. Joining at the same time as Ellison, Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, the global chief human resources officer of the Walgreens Boots Alliance, also sits on Tesla’s board as of December. Robyn Denholm, the former COO of Australian telcom giant Telstra, was named as Tesla’s chair in November.