Larry Ellison doubled his wealth gain this year to $200 billion on Wednesday thanks to Oracle's stock surge, becoming the world's richest person.
Ellison, the enterprise-software giant's cofounder, surged past Tesla CEO Elon Musk as his net worth topped $393 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
Oracle shares shot up 42% Wednesday to trade at record highs. Investors piled in after the company forecast phenomenal revenue growth, underpinned by AI demand, in an earnings report after the bell in New York. The stock has now doubled this year, lifting Oracle's market value to nearly $1 trillion.
Ellison, 81, was already the rich list's biggest gainer this year at Tuesday's close, having gained $103 billion since January. That figure exceeds Starbucks' entire market value of $95 billion.
The Oracle chairman's net worth has now more than quadrupled in under three years, from about $80 billion in October 2022, as the cloud-computing titan's shares went from below $70 to above $340 on Wednesday.
"We expect Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue to grow 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year — and then increase to $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion, and $144 billion over the subsequent four years," Oracle CEO Safra Catz said in the company's earnings first-quarter report. Oracle's total revenue was about $57 billion last financial year.
Wednesday's stock jump boosted the value of Ellison's stake in Oracle by $117 billion to around $395 billion. The one-day increase is greater than the market values of Nike, Robinhood, or DoorDash.
Bloomberg has a significantly lower estimate of Ellison's wealth because he's pledged about a quarter of his Oracle shares as collateral for personal loans. The rich list deducts half of those pledged shares from his share count to calculate his net worth.
Ellison also bought about 1.6% of Tesla before he joined its board in December 2018, a position that would be worth over $15 billion today. However, he stepped down in 2022 and no longer has to disclose his stake.
