Oracle Corp. is having a year unlike any in its nearly half-century history, and so is its chief executive.
Safra Catz, Oracle’s 63-year-old CEO, has quietly become one of the wealthiest women in corporate America.
Her fortune swelled this week to an estimated $3.4 billion, according to Forbes, after Oracle stock surged more than 30 percent on the heels of a bullish earnings report.
The software giant’s market capitalization now stands above $920 billion—larger than Walmart or JPMorgan Chase and its shares have doubled in value year to date.
That performance has propelled founder Larry Ellison’s net worth above $350 billion, putting him neck-and-neck with Elon Musk as the world’s richest man. But it has also cemented Catz’s place as a central figure in one of Silicon Valley’s most remarkable comeback stories.
“Clearly, we had an amazing start to the year because Oracle has become the go-to place for AI workloads,” Catz said during Tuesday’s earnings call. “We have signed significant cloud contracts with the who’s who of AI, including OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Nvidia, AMD and many others.
The 2025 boom is validation for a leader who has often worked behind the scenes. Catz has served as Oracle’s CEO since 2014, when Ellison stepped down from the role. She joined the company in 1999 and quickly made her mark by engineering its aggressive acquisition strategy, helping close more than 130 deals that reshaped the firm’s software empire.
Brief profile
Born in Israel and raised in the United States, Catz earned a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania before spending 14 years on Wall Street covering the software industry. She rose to managing director at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette before Oracle recruited her. Over the years she has served as Oracle’s president, chief financial officer, and vice president, before finally taking the reins as chief executive.
Catz’s influence extends well beyond the corner office. She is a lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, chairs the Oracle Education Foundation, and sits on the board of trustees of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm that invests on behalf of the U.S. intelligence community. Her past board seats include The Walt Disney Company and HSBC Holdings.
Politically, she has not been shy about her affiliations. In June 2020, Catz and her husband, Gal Tirosh, contributed $250,000 to a fundraising committee supporting then-President Donald Trump. Her relationships in Washington, along with Oracle’s government contracts, have kept her in the spotlight during debates over technology’s role in national security.
For Catz, though, the numbers speak loudest. Just on Wednesday, her personal wealth grew by more than $400 million in six hours of trading. Oracle’s breakout year may be redefining Ellison’s place in the pantheon of the world’s richest men, but it is also elevresurgence an executive who, after more than two decades at the company, is now synonymous with its success.
