Oracle founder Ellison ranked second on the billionaires list, surpassing Zuckerberg

Larry Ellison, the 80-year-old founder of cloud services provider Oracle, has for the first time become the second richest person in the world according to the version of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His fortune exceeded $250 billion, helped by the rapid growth of Oracle shares. Ellison displaced Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has now dropped to third place. The first place is still held by Tesla CEO Ilon Musk.

Larry Ellison's fortune has reached $257 billion, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows. This allowed the Oracle founder to take the second place in the list. On Wednesday, July 16, his capital was replenished by $5.9 billion - thanks to the growth of Oracle shares.

They rose in price by 2.7% after jumping by 5.7% on Tuesday. Quotes were influenced by the news that U.S. authorities intend to allow chip makers, including Nvidia and AMD, to partially resume semiconductor exports to China, easing current restrictions, Bloomberg explains. More than 80% of Ellison's fortune is concentrated in Oracle stock and options, the agency notes.

According to the Billionaires Index, the richest person in the world will still remain Ilon Musk with a fortune of $366 billion, while Mark Zuckerberg dropped to third place with $247 billion.

Oracle was among the main beneficiaries of the hype around artificial intelligence, Bloomberg writes. The company's value has nearly tripled since ChatGPT was released in November 2022. Its stock has posted gains of more than 90% since late April, when Oracle reported a surge in revenue and signed contracts worth tens of billions of dollars with key partners, as well as announcing it was building data centers for enterprise customers like OpenAI. As part of a joint Stargate initiative with SoftBank, OpenAI in July leased a huge amount of additional computing resources from Oracle, the agency recalls. The company's results in the latest quarter also significantly exceeded analysts' expectations.

Investment bank Piper Sandler on July 10 raised its rating on Oracle shares from neutral to "above market," equivalent to a buy recommendation, and raised its target price from $190 to $270. That's nearly 12% more than the current value. Piper Sandler's target is among the most optimistic on Wall Street. According to the investment bank's analysts, which reports Barron's, for the first time since ChatGPT was released in 2022, companies have begun to reallocate spending in favor of AI and cloud infrastructure, sidelining investments in software applications. One of the main beneficiaries of this shift has been Oracle.

That said, the Wall Street consensus price target implies a 5% decline in the company's stock.

The strong rise in Nvidia shares has supported the fortune of the company's CEO Jensen Huang, who passed Warren Buffett for the first time on July 11 to rank ninth on Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. His $149 billion fortune is almost entirely centered in Nvidia stock. The company's capitalization this month rose above $4 trillion for the first time it is now the world's most valuable company;

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor