Larry Ellison, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Oracle Corporation, saw his personal fortune grow by $7.3 billion on Tuesday, following a sharp rally in the software giant’s stock.
The 79-year-old tech mogul is now worth an estimated $203 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaire tracker, solidifying his place as the fourth-richest person in the world.
Shares of Oracle jumped 3.81% to close at $161.91 on May 28, driven by renewed investor confidence in the company’s expanding cloud infrastructure business.
The stock’s gains added billions to Ellison’s wealth, as he owns approximately 40% of Oracle, the company he helped launch in 1977.
The surge in Ellison’s net worth comes amid a mixed but increasingly optimistic picture for Oracle’s financial performance. The company recently reported a 9% year-over-year revenue increase in constant currency for its fiscal second quarter—beating analyst expectations. Strong growth in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which saw a 52% annual increase, played a central role in the market’s reaction.
While Oracle has faced skepticism over its ability to compete with larger cloud rivals like Amazon and Microsoft, the company has continued to push forward with ambitious targets. It reaffirmed guidance for double-digit revenue growth for the fiscal year and projects that cloud revenue will reach $25 billion, with OCI expected to maintain a growth rate above 50%.
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Still, not all of Oracle’s metrics have impressed investors. Free cash flow came in lower than anticipated at -$2.7 billion, weighed down by higher capital expenditures. Earnings per share also fell slightly short of consensus estimates, partially due to the absence of expected foreign exchange gains.
Even so, the market appears to be betting on Oracle’s long-term strategy, and Ellison remains at the center of that vision. A dominant figure in Silicon Valley for decades, he stepped down as CEO in 2014 but has maintained a prominent role in shaping the company’s future. Under his guidance, Oracle has pursued a series of high-profile acquisitions, most notably its $28.3 billion purchase of Cerner, a major electronic health records company, in 2021.
Ellison, who relocated permanently to the Hawaiian island of Lanai in 2020, a property he purchased nearly all of in 2012, continues to make headlines not only for his wealth but for his influence in tech and business. As Oracle eyes deeper inroads into artificial intelligence and enterprise cloud services, his fortune appears poised to grow even further.
