Oracle Chairman Sees $16 Billion Increase in Fortune

The Chairman of Oracle, Larry Ellison has seen an addition of almost $16 billion to his fortune as at the close of Friday, pushing him past Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and inching him closer towards Bill Gates.

Oracle’s stock went up about 16% after a quarterly earnings report late on Thursday which was better than expected. Ellison, who is the company’s biggest stakeholder with 1.4 billion shares is now worth a sum of $135.7 billion, according to Forbes.

The Oracle stock surge was the company’s second-biggest surge in the last 20 years, and was a huge boost to Ellison, who co-founded the company in 1977. Following the surge, Ellison has now moved ahead on the Forbes billionaires list, going just ahead of Google’s Larry Page ($126.3 billion) and Sergey Brin ($121.7 billion) into fifth place.

He is also closer to Bill Gates, the world’s fourth-richest person who is worth $139.2 billion.

Ellison’s resurgence comes across as unexpected, considering next-generation tech companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook have been witnessing exponential growth in recent years while Oracle has sluggishly followed with mainly single-digit growth.

Oracle is now showing signs of gaining momentum as the company’s latest guidance surpassed estimates, making investors more confident in the company’s shift to the cloud.

The increase in his personal wealth back above the Google founders is likely to be a sweet feat for Ellison. Back in April, the Supreme Court backed Google against Oracle in a long-running copyright dispute concerning the software used in the Android mobile operating system. Ellison may therefore see this as payback against the tech giant.

Ellison gets most of his wealth from his ownership of Oracle, which has gone up about $44 billion this year due to the company’s 59% gain in stock price. However, he has made an extra fortune from trust in Tesla and Elon Musk three years ago.

In late 2018, Ellison revealed that he had acquired a $1 billion stake in Tesla. Over the past three years, the Electric Vehicle maker’s market cap has gone up by close to 1300%, and Ellison’s shares are now worth $16 billion.