Bansri Shah, Pune
Larry Ellison, the Chairman of Oracle, briefly surpassed Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, and claimed the position of the world’s second-richest person as of Monday, September 16. The Amazon founder has since restored his title, which he has held on and off since 2016.
This increase in Ellison’s net worth and wealth was a result of a surge in Oracle’s stock which rose by 5.1 percent on September 16. The shares of Oracle, a software giant, have increased as much as 20 percent in the month of September which marks it as their best performance since October 2022. The surge has surpassed expectations, resulting in an upward revision of its revenue forecast for the fiscal year 2026.
Ellison’s net worth stood at $206 billion on Monday, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list. The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, has kept his position of the world’s richest person with a net worth of $251 billion.
Larry Ellison, who founded the company in 1977, has been responsible for significant technological innovation at Oracle, spearheading strategic acquisitions and investments. It has been his vision and business sense that has greatly influenced the tech industry, especially expanding Oracle’s global footprint.
The success of the company has been a result of its role in the boom of artificial intelligence. Ellison discussed in an earnings call last week about its expansion into the generative AI sector by developing data centers to meet its growing demand. He stated that they are in the process of developing the “smallest, most portable, most affordable cloud data centers… ideal for training very large language models and keeping them up to date.”
In a recent announcement, the company has also stated that it will be joining forces with Amazon’s cloud computing unit to activate its database services on specialized hardware. It has made similar collaborations with Google as well as Microsoft in 2024, both being leading cloud computing companies.
As of now, the Forbes’ list shows Jeff Bezos reclaiming his title as the second-richest person with a net worth of $204 billion followed by Larry Ellison at $200 billion, Mark Zuckerburg at $186 billion, Bernard Arnault & family at $170 billion in the top five.