Founder and main shareholder of Oracle, Larry Ellisonrose two spots in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index after the tech giant released a stellar outlook this week.
Just yesterday, Ellison’s net worth was $138 billion, but overnight it jumped 14 to 152 billion dollars.
This is largely because the A 79-year-old entrepreneur owns more than 40% of the cloud applications business, which saw its shares jump 13% on June 11 after the company reported positive year-end financial results.
Due to his sudden increase in wealth, Ellison has surpassed two other tech titans on Bloomberg Billionaires Index: ancient Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft and the founder of Google parent company Alphabet, Sergey Brin.
Even though Ballmer and Brin have both seen their wealth increase so far this year ($21.2 billion and $27.2 billion, respectively), it hasn’t been enough to stay one step ahead of Ellisonwhose fortune soared by $29.1 billion in 2024 alone, bringing it to an all-time high.
The reason their collective wealth has grown so exponentially is Silicon Valley’s favorite term: artificial intelligence.
Let’s move on to Oracle first, in its bumper outlook published TuesdaySafra Catz, CEO, said the organization signed “the largest sales deals in our history, driven by enormous demand for training large language models for AI.”
Catz, who previously served as CFO at Oracle, continued: “Throughout fiscal 2025, I expect continued strong demand for AI to drive Oracle’s sales…again upper.
“In the fourth quarter alone, Oracle signed more than 30 AI sales contracts totaling more than $12.5 billion.including one with OpenAI to train ChatGPT in Oracle Cloud.”
In addition to the OpenAI contract, Oracle is also working more closely with Microsoft, a backer of maker ChatGPT, and Google. During the earnings conference call, Ellison said: “As customers continue to choose and use multiple clouds, hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google respond by interconnecting their clouds.
“Oracle recently signed an agreement with Google to interconnect our clouds… We expect the Oracle database to be available in Google Cloud in September of this year.”
Ellison is not the only one
Others with ties to big tech have also seen their wealth increase this year thanks to, you guessed it, AI. Overall, the super-rich saw at least $150 billion added to their fortune courtesy of technology.
Take Brinwhich owns 41.8% of Alphabet’s Class B shares, according to proxy statement 2023– and CEO Sundar Pichai, who owns 227,560 Class A shares. Both individuals have seen their fortunes grow thanks to disruptive technology, with Pichai now close to billionaire status thanks to his salary package and his share allocations.
Alphabet’s stock has soared this year– up 28% year-to-date at the time of writing – but rebounded particularly as earnings shared positive AI news. On April 25, for example, the company announced its results for the first quarter of 2024 and declared that everything was “on track with our era Gemini” and continues to establish itself as a leader in AI.
The market liked what it heard and shared open 15% higher the day after the announcement compared to the day before.
The story is the same for Ballmer and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. In April, Gates’ wealth increased by $2 billion following an earnings call that mentioned AI 50 times, as CEO Satya Nadella revealed a series of new AI deployments. He said: “We have the most powerful AI infrastructure, and it is used by our partner, OpenAI, as well as by Nvidia and leading AI startups like Adept and Inflection to train large models.
After the call, Microsoft shares posted their best one-day percentage gain since November 2022. Analysts also pointed out that shares reached a milestone on an absolute basis: they had never risen more than 19 $.77 in one sitting, until they do it at the end. From April.
Elsewhere Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth has grown thanks to the combination of his “year of efficiency” and his adventures in artificial intelligence. In January, Zuckerberg presented a series of measures aimed at streamlining the company and in February presented a broader artificial intelligence strategy– since then, his wealth has increased from $63 billion to $181 billion, per Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
