Larry Ellison Overtakes Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg As World’s Second-Richest Person

 

After eclipsing Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in net worth, Larry Ellison is richer than anyone other than Tesla CEO Elon Musk

Larry Ellison reclaimed his spot among the world’s three richest people Thursday as shares of his cloud computing titan surged to an all-time high following earnings, marking the latest back-and-forth near the top of Forbes’ rich list amid the artificial intelligence arms race.

Key Facts

Ellison’s net worth shot up by $23 billion to $240 billion shortly after Thursday’s market open, enjoying easily the largest daily bump of any billionaire, according to Forbes data.

That gain was enough to vault Ellison past Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos ($227 billion net worth) and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg ($238 billion) for the second spot on Forbes’ real-time billionaires ranking.

Ellison is now only less wealthy than his longtime friend Elon Musk ($411 billion net worth).

Why Oracle Stock Rose Thursday

The post-earnings rally sent Oracle stock to a record of more than $200 per share. Shares of Oracle jumped more than 13% after a Wednesday afternoon earnings report revealed stronger profits ($1.70 adjusted earnings per share) and sales ($15.9 billion revenue) than Wall Street expected for the company’s financial quarter ending last month. Deutsche Bank analyst Brad Zelnick described the earnings update as a “watershed” moment for Oracle, adding in a note to clients: “When Larry Ellison speaks of entering a new era of cloud computing, all should pay careful attention,” nodding to Oracle’s position as one of the powering forces in the generative and agentic AI push.

Crucial Quote

Oracle’s 2026 fiscal year starting this month will be a “major inflection point” for Oracle’s core cloud infrastructure service “driven by massive demand for AI training workloads,” predicted TD Cowen analyst Derrick Wood in a note.

Key Background

Oracle is an enterprise software colossus, making much of its hay selling cloud computing and data storage, notably hosting the U.S. data of the social media platform TikTok. Ellison owns about 41% of Oracle, the company he cofounded in 1977. The 80-year-old Ellison is no stranger from the public eye. He served on Tesla’s board of directors from 2018 to 2022, spent at least $20 million to help elect GOP candidates during 2022 midterm elections, bought a Hawaiian island for $300 million and even contributed to a record sum paid to bring the nation’s top quarterback recruit to the University of Michigan’s football team, the alma mater of his 33-year-old wife Kere Zhu. Ellison also appeared alongside President Donald Trump in January to unveil Stargate, the joint venture between Oracle, SoftBank and OpenAI to supercharge the U.S.’ AI push.