Who is Larry Ellison? How Oracle chairman briefly became world’s second-richest man, surpassing Jeff Bezos

Oracle shares closed up 5.1% on Monday, September 16, prompting Ellison to become the world’s second-richest person for a brief period. Ellison holds roughly 40% of Oracle, and has directly profited from the recent spike in stock prices.

A moment came when Ellison’s wealth increased to over $208 billion, briefly surpassing Bezos’s $204 billion net worth. Ellison was listed as the second-richest person in the world for the first time.

However, Ellison’s net worth soon dropped to $181 billion. Bezos’ net worth, on the other hand, rose to $208 billion. Elon Musk remained the wealthiest person, having a net worth of $248 billion.

Oracle has focused on cloud services and AI, and that has seemed to pay off. At a recent event, Ellison even predicted that the company’s cloud databases will continue to grow with more companies choosing Oracle for their cloud services.

Ellison also said during a recent Oracle financial analyst meeting that he believes that AI will bring in a new era of widespread monitoring, and Oracle could be an important part of this transformation. “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting,” Ellison said.

Who is Larry Ellison?

Ellison is the chairman of Oracle Corporation and chief technology officer. He founded the company in 1977, and served as CEO until September 2014. According to Forbes, “Oracle has grown in part through steady acquisitions of software companies: the biggest was $28.3 billion for electronic health records company Cerner in 2021.”

Ellison moved permanently to the Hawaiian island Lanai back in 2020. He is known to have been on Tesla’s board from December 2018 to August 2022, and continues to own about 15 million shares in the electric carmaker.