Larry Ellison of Oracle, ORCL, has become the world's second-richest person, dethroning Jeff Bezos of Amazon, AMZN
Since the market closed on Friday, Ellison’s net worth has surged by $11.7 billion, reaching $209 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaire tracker. Jeff Bezos, who has alternated between being the second-richest person and other spots since 2016, currently has a net worth of $202 billion. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, remains at the top of the list with a net worth of $251 billion.
Oracle’s stock has hit new highs following the company’s earnings report last week, which exceeded expectations and raised its revenue forecast for fiscal 2026. This boost briefly elevated Ellison to the position of the world’s second-richest person on Friday, although Bezos later reclaimed the spot.
Oracle shares have increased by 23% this month. If this rally continues, it will mark the best monthly performance since October 2022, when the stock rose by 28%, and the second-best since approximately October 2002.
The rise in Oracle’s stock is partly attributed to the company's involvement in the artificial intelligence boom. Ellison, who founded Oracle in 1977, discussed on the earnings call last week how the company is expanding its data center capabilities to meet the growing demand for generative AI.
“We are building everything from the smallest, most portable, and affordable cloud data centers to massive 200-megawatt facilities, which are ideal for training and updating very large language models,” Ellison noted during the call.
Additionally, Oracle announced last week a partnership with Amazon’s cloud computing division to provide its database services on dedicated hardware. Over the past year, it has formed similar alliances with Microsoft and Google, the other major players in cloud infrastructure.