Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison has become the world’s second-richest person after beating Amazon founder Jeff Bezos after the tech giant's stock has climbed to new highs. Since Friday, Ellison’s net worth increased by $8.1 billion to reach roughly $206 billion, as per Forbes’ real-time billionaires list. The richest person in the world, however, continues to be tech billionaire Elon Musk with a net worth of $251 billion. Bezos's net worth is estimated to be $203 billion.
Last week Oracle reported earnings that surpassed expectations and boosted its fiscal 2026 revenue forecast. Following the announcement, its share has been up 20 percent for the month, CNBC reported. The success is partly due to the company’s role in the artificial intelligence boom. Ellison shared how the company is building data centers to accommodate the increasing demand for generative AI.
“We are literally building the smallest, most portable, most affordable cloud data centers all the way up to 200-megawatt data centers, ideal for training very large language models and keeping them up to date,” Ellison said at Oracle's earnings call last week.
Here are 10 things to know about the second-richest person in the world:
1.) Larry Ellison never finished college. He attended the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign from 1962 but dropped out in 1964 shortly after the death of his aunt who was also his adoptive mother. He also briefly attended the University of Chicago in 1966.
2.) He went to California and spent the next several years as a computer programmer for various companies including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
3.) In 1977, he founded Oracle and is currently the chairman and chief technology officer of the company.
4.) The 80-year-old owns just under 40 percent of the software giant.
5.) According to Forbes, Ellison sat on electric carmaker Tesla's board from December 2018 to August 2022. He currently owns about 15 million shares in the company.
6.) Ellison now only trails Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $250.7 billion fortune for the title of the world’s richest person.
7.) He used to live in California but in 2020, the Oracle founder moved permanently to the Hawaiian island Lanai, which he bought nearly all of in 2012 for $300 million.
8.) Ellison was the CEO of Oracle for 37 years. He stepped down in 2014.
9.) He was an avid yachtsman who founded a team that won the prestigious America’s Cup in 2010.
10.) His children are into filmmaking. His daughter Megan has financed films such as Zero Dark Thirty and American Hustle while his son David produced mainstream movies like The Terminator and Mission: Impossible.
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