Oracle’s founder and largest shareholder, Larry Ellison, has jumped two spots on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index after the tech behemoth posted a bumper outlook this week.
Only yesterday Ellison’s net worth was $138 billion but overnight that leapt $14 billion to $152 billion.
That’s largely because the 79-year-old entrepreneur owns more than 40% of the cloud applications business, which saw its shares surge 13% on June 11 after the company posted positive year-end financial results.
As a result of his sudden increase in wealth Ellison jumped past two other tech titans on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index: former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and the founder of Google parent company Alphabet, Sergey Brin.
While Ballmer and Brin have both seen boosts to their wealth so far this year ($21.2 billion and $27.2 billion respectively) it hasn’t been enough to stay ahead of Ellison, whose fortune has ballooned by $29.1 billion in 2024 alone, taking it to a record high.
The reason for their collective riches growing so exponentially is Silicon Valley’s favorite term: artificial intelligence.
Turning first to Oracle, in its bumper outlook released Tuesday, CEO Safra Catz said the organization had signed “the largest sales contracts in our history—driven by enormous demand for training AI large language models.”
Catz, who previously held the role of CFO at Oracle, continued: “Throughout fiscal year 2025, I expect continued strong AI demand to push Oracle sales… even higher.
“In Q4 alone, Oracle signed over 30 AI sales contracts totaling more than $12.5 billion—including one with OpenAI to train ChatGPT in the Oracle Cloud.”
As well as the OpenAI contract, Oracle is also working more closely with Microsoft—a backer of the ChatGPT maker—and Google. During the earnings call, Ellison said: “As customers continue to choose and use multiple clouds, hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google are responding by interconnecting their clouds.
“Oracle recently signed an agreement with Google to interconnect our clouds… We expect the Oracle database to be available within the Google Cloud in September this year.”
Ellison’s not the only one
Others with Big Tech ties have also seen their wealth spike this year thanks to—you guessed it—AI. Across the board the super-rich have seen at least $150 billion added to their fortunes courtesy of the tech.
Take Brin, who owns 41.8% of Alphabet’s Class B stocks—per the company’s 2023 proxy statement—and CEO Sundar Pichai, who owns 227,560 Class A shares. Both individuals have seen their fortunes grow thanks to the disruptive technology, with Pichai now nearing billionaire status thanks to his salary package and stock awards.
Alphabet’s stock has surged this year—up 28% for the year to date at the time of writing—but has bounced particularly when earnings have shared positive AI news. On April 25, in one example, the company announced its Q12024 results and said it was “well under way with our Gemini era” and was continuing to establish itself as an AI leader.
The market liked what it heard, and shares opened 15% higher the day following the announcement compared to the morning prior.
The story is the same for Ballmer and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. In April, Gates’s wealth grew $2 billion off the back of an earnings call which mentioned AI 50 times, as CEO Satya Nadella revealed a raft of new AI deployments. He said: “We have the most powerful AI infrastructure, and it’s being used by our partner, OpenAI, as well as Nvidia and leading AI startups like Adept and Inflection to train large models.”
After the call Microsoft shares logged their best single-day percentage hike since November 2022. Analysts also pointed out the shares reached a milestone on an absolute basis—they had previously never risen more than $19.77 in a single session, until they did at the end of April.
Elsewhere Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth has grown thanks to a combination of his “year of efficiency” and his adventures in artificial intelligence. In January, Zuckerberg outlined a raft of measures to streamline the company and in February outlined a wider artificial intelligence strategy—since then his wealth has grown from $63 billion to $181 billion, per Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Source: finance.yahoo.com