Larry Ellison, founder and former CEO of Oracle Inc. watches a training race from a motor boat ahead of the America’s Cup World Series sailing competition on the Great Sound in Hamilton, Bermuda, October 16, 2015.
Mike Segar | Reuters
Oracle founder Larry Ellison notched a $15 billion gain on Tuesday after shares of his software company had their best day in over two years and closed at a record.
Ellison, who started Oracle in 1977, remains the company’s biggest shareholder with a stake valued at roughly $146 billion after the latest pop. He’s the fifth-wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes, just behind Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and ahead of Warren Buffett.
Oracle shares soared 12% to close at $127.54, after the software vendor reported fiscal third-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ expectations. Revenue in the company’s cloud services and licenses support segment climbed 12%, topping estimates.
While Oracle was late to cloud infrastructure and has been on the fringes of the latest artificial intelligence boom, increased demand for the company’s AI technology is allowing Ellison to tout his company’s expansion in the hottest market in the industry.
“We’re building an AI data center in the United States where you can park eight Boeing 747s nose-to-tail in that one data center,” Ellison, who still operates as Oracle’s chief technology officer, said on the earnings call. “We are building large numbers of data centers and some of those data centers are smallish, but some of those data centers are the largest AI data centers in the world.”
Over the past year, Oracle shares have now spiked 52%, lifting Ellison’s worth by about $50 billion. The stock has outperformed the S&P 500, which has gained 34% in the past 12 months.
Unlike Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison has been hanging onto all his stock rather than selling off chunks. According to FactSet, Ellison’s last transaction in Oracle stock was a purchase of 7,000 shares in 2022, and he hasn’t sold any since 2016.
Bezos has sold over 50,000 Amazon shares this year. Most recently, in mid-February he unloaded more than 14 million shares of his company valued at roughly $2.4 billion.