Why Oracle’s new CFO Hilary Maxson is key to its AI ambitions

Maxson began as CFO on Monday, the company announced. She was previously EVP and group CFO at Schneider Electric and spent 12 years at AES Corporation in senior roles across finance, strategy, and M&A. Doug Kehring will transition out of his role as Oracle’s principal financial officer.

Larry Ellison, co-founder and CTO of Oracle, briefly became the world’s richest person in September 2025 as the company’s stock surged 40%, adding about $100 billion to over $400 billion, but by April 2026, AI spending concerns halved the stock, cutting over $200 billion and leaving his net worth near $200 billion.

Maxson joins Oracle during a period of “rapid growth as customer demand for cloud infrastructure exceeds supply,” the company said. Demand for AI training, multi-cloud databases, and cloud applications is driving rapid expansion.

“We found a financial leader who matches our culture of strong financial and operational discipline and has experience scaling capital-intensive global organizations,” Clay Magouyrk, co-CEO of Oracle, said in a statement.

Since Maxson joined Schneider Electric in 2017, the company transformed from an electrical equipment supplier into a digital energy technology partner for utilities and data centers, focusing on software, data, and AI. She led its global finance organization, overseeing capital allocation, business model transformation, and long-term value creation.

“Cloud infrastructure buildout will remain the top priority for Oracle, without any doubt,” Luke Yang, an equity analyst at Morningstar, told me. “Electric equipment is crucial to data centers, and we look forward to Maxson bringing more granularity to sourcing and planning Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s (OCI) future capacity expansion.” The company’s free cash flow should remain negative over the next few years, he added. “It is too early to talk about shareholder returns before OCI reaches a scale that contributes positively to Oracle’s cash flows.”

Maxson is becoming CFO as Oracle builds “significant momentum at the intersection of cloud, AI, and industry applications,” she said in a statement. She will receive a $950,000 base salary and be eligible for a performance-based bonus targeting $2.5 million, according to an SEC filing.

Last month, Oracle (No. 87 on the Fortune 500) reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $17.19 billion, exceeding estimates. For its fiscal year (FY) 2026, the company expects revenue of $67 billion and capital expenditures of $50 billion. For FY 2027, it raised its total revenue guidance to $90 billion. Growth was driven by OCI, even as Oracle takes on significant debt to expand its AI infrastructure.

To fund these investments, Oracle’s debt has climbed past $100 billion, Fortune reported. It also plans to raise $45 billion to $50 billion through a mix of debt and equity, including a $20 billion equity program and bond issuance, while implementing workforce reductions to free up capital.

Maxson’s mandate goes beyond allocating capital—it centers on whether Oracle can scale its AI ambitions without overextending its balance sheet.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.co

Leaderboard

Ben Colabrese was appointed CFO of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets, effective April 27. Colabrese joins the Mets with an extensive background in elite sports and media leadership, most recently serving as CFO of the NHL’s Ottawa Senators. He previously spent six years as EVP of finance and CFO for the Toronto Blue Jays, during which he also held the role of SVP of finance for Rogers Media. Earlier in his career, Colabrese led over 30 M&A transactions as VP of Corporate Development for Rogers Communications and served as CFO for Pelmorex Media.

Sean McSherry was promoted to CFO of Indeed, a job site and hiring platform. McSherry joined Indeed in 2012 as director of financial planning and analysis, where he built the company’s FP&A function and went on to lead sales operations and strategy. He was promoted to SVP of finance in 2021. Before joining Indeed, McSherry began his career in investment banking and later held senior finance leadership roles at global organizations, as well as several New York-based startups.

Big Deal

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has released its “2026 State of the VC-Backed CFO” report. The report gauges how finance leaders at top-performing venture-backed companies are balancing competing priorities: leading finance teams, investor relations, legal, HR, facilities, and now AI adoption, budgeting, and evaluation.

Sixty-two percent of startups surveyed now rank AI as a top-two priority. Over 90% of companies encourage AI use at work, up from 68% last year. VC-backed CFOs rank AI adoption as the primary external factor impacting their business, placing it above inflation, interest rates, tariffs and government regulation.

Going deeper

“A J.P. Morgan analyst sees 60% downside to Tesla stock—and he may be too optimistic” is a Fortune article by Shawn Tully.

Tully writes: ” J.P. Morgan analyst Ryan Brinkman issued a report on Tesla the likes of which Wall Street has seldom if ever seen. Brinkman asserted that at its current price of $361, the EV maker is hugely overvalued.” You can read more here. 

Overheard

“Today’s anything-goes, zero-sum war for attention ignores the lessons learned in the Golden Age of advertising when brands were sold with thoughtful, artistic, wise and playful takes on the human condition.”

—Bruce Stockler, a former director of corporate communications at McCann Worldgroup, writes in a Fortune opinion piece.