Oracle’s Larry Ellison just rocked the billionaires club—a $40 billion gain has made him the second-richest man, ahead of Bezos and Zuckerberg
The tech exec is now wealthier than Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, with a $250 billion fortune—but he’ll have a hard time dethroning his close friend Elon Musk.
- Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison is now the second richest person in the world, after his cloud computing business’s stocks soared last week. The chairman’s net worth surged by more than $40 billion, outpacing the wealth of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and reaching a high of $250.9 billion. But he’ll have a hard time topping the riches of his close friend, Elon Musk, who sits on a cool $405.8 billion fortune.
No one was in a better mood last week than Larry Ellison—the Oracle cofounder shot up Forbes’ billionaire rankings list, reaching the number two spot, right below his close friend Elon Musk.
Ellison’s net worth now stands tall at $250.9 billion after Oracle’s recent earnings report triggered its shares to skyrocket.
With approximately 41% of Oracle’s shares in his name, the cloud computing mogul saw his net worth climb by over $40 billion in a matter of days. On Thursday last week, his fortune grew by $25 billion, and increased by another $16 billion on Friday: easily two of the largest daily swells in billionaire net worth that week, according to Forbes.
Now, Ellison has overtaken Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, who is currently worth $229 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg, who has a $240 billion net worth, in the billionaires club.
The one person he hasn’t topped yet is Elon Musk—Ellison’s close friend, who is still the world’s richest man with $405 billion in riches. There’s nearly a $155 billion difference between their net worths, so Ellison has his work cut out for him if he ever hopes to reach number one.
The Oracle stock frenzy that propelled Ellison to a $250 billion fortune
Last Wednesday, the afternoon earnings were dubbed a “watershed” moment for the cloud computing company. It was also a big moment for Ellison’s wallet.
The report shows Oracle’s total revenue for the 2025 fiscal year rose by 8%, reaching a whopping $57.4 billion. The $1.70 adjusted earnings per share outperformed Wall Street’s expectations, alongside its unprecedented $15.9 billion in sales. One day after these figures were released, Oracle’s stock soared by 13%—and by midafternoon Friday, it rose another 7% to a record of $215 per share.
Ellison, the chairman and CTO of Oracle, subsequently enjoyed an 11-figure surge in net worth. Last Tuesday afternoon, the day before the cloud computing titan released its earnings report, Ellison’s net worth stood at $213 billion.
While the 80-year-old entrepreneur may feel on top of the world right now, there’s no telling where he’ll be in 2026. Billionaire’s wealth fluctuates all the time—Bernard Arnault, founder and CEO of luxury fashion house LVMH, was the world’s richest person at the start of 2024 with $231 billion. Today, he’s in seventh place with a net worth of $142 billion, thanks to tumbling stocks.
However, TD Cowen analyst Derrick Wood said Oracle’s 2026 fiscal year, starting this month, will be a “major inflection point” for the business’ cloud infrastructure services, propelled by “massive demand for AI training workloads.” And Ellison himself sees the promise of what lies ahead.
“Oracle’s future is bright in this new era of cloud computing. Oracle will be the number one cloud database company,” Ellison said in the business’ earnings call last Friday. “Oracle is already prospering in this new era of cloud computing and AI, and it’s just the beginning.”
Topping Zuckerberg and Bezos, but falling short of Musk—for now
Ellison sees the next year as a new frontier for Oracle, which could mean another big payout for the executive. But even if he takes the number one spot for the world’s richest person, Musk probably won’t have hard feelings—after all, they’re good friends.
“I am not sure how many people know, but I’m very close friends with Elon Musk, and I’m a big investor in Tesla,” Ellison said during a 2018 conference call with analysts.
Ellison and Musk are two peas in a pod—both are wildly successful tech entrepreneurs with big personalities. The Oracle cofounder has repeatedly defended Musk, arguing against public backlash that he “doesn’t know what he’s doing,” saying he “loved” articles about the Tesla founder “smoking dope.”
In 2018, Musk even appointed Ellison to his Tesla board, drawing scrutiny from critics who argued it’s harder to maintain objectivity with friends on corporate boards.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
