Who Is Larry Ellison? Oracle CEO Leaves Jeff Bezos Behind To Become World’s Second-Richest Man

Oracle shares rose by 5.1% on Monday, continuing their upward trend and elevating Chairman Larry Ellison to the position of the world’s second-richest individual, surpassing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

According to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list, Ellison’s net worth surged by $8.1 billion since Friday’s market close, reaching approximately $206 billion, while Bezos is now worth $203 billion. Tesla CEO Elon Musk remains the wealthiest person with a net worth of $251 billion.

Oracle’s stock hit new highs after reporting better-than-expected earnings last week and raising its fiscal 2026 revenue forecast. The stock rally briefly pushed Ellison past Bezos on Friday, though Bezos soon reclaimed his position.

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Shares of Oracle are up 20% this month, marking their best performance since October 2022, when they soared by 28%, and their second-best month since October 2002.

Oracle’s recent stock success is partly attributed to its involvement in the growing artificial intelligence industry. During the company’s earnings call, Ellison highlighted Oracle’s efforts to build data centers to meet the rising demand for generative AI.

Ellison stated, “We are literally building the smallest, most portable, most affordable cloud data centers, all the way up to 200-megawatt data centers, ideal for training very large language models and keeping them up to date.”

Last week, Oracle announced a partnership with Amazon’s cloud division to offer its database services on dedicated hardware, following similar agreements with Microsoft and Google over the past year.

Who Is Larry Ellison?

Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle Corp. (ORCL) in 1977, transforming it from a small start-up with just three programmers into the world’s largest provider of database software and the second-largest supplier of business applications.

Under Ellison’s leadership, Oracle expanded rapidly, driven by his ability to identify and penetrate new markets. The company also grew through major acquisitions, including its $7.4 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems in 2009 and the $9.3 billion acquisition of NetSuite in 2016.

Ellison stepped down as CEO in 2014 but continues to serve as chairman of the board and chief technology officer. Despite various challenges, Oracle saw steady growth over the years, with the release of Oracle 7 in 1992 marking a significant success that made Ellison a billionaire.

As of June 10, 2023, Bloomberg reported that Ellison was the fifth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $124 billion.