Larry Ellison becomes world’s second-richest man, dethroning Jeff Bezos as Oracle stock surges

Oracle shares closed up 5.1% on Monday, continuing their recently rally and propelling Chairman Larry Ellison to become the world’s second-richest person, snatching the title from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Since the close of trading Friday, Ellison’s net worth has jumped $8.1 billion to reach roughly $206 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list. Bezos, who had been the second-richest person on and off since 2016, is worth $203 billion. Tesla CEO Elon Musk sits at the top of the list, with a net worth of $251 billion.

Oracle’s stock has climbed to new highs after the company reported earnings last week that surpassed expectations and boosted its fiscal 2026 revenue forecast. The stock surge caused Ellison to briefly pass Bezos as the world’s second-richest person on Friday, before the Amazon founder reclaimed the title.

Shares of Oracle are up 20% for the month. If the rally stops there, it would be their best month since October 2022, when the stock soared 28%, and the second-best month since roughly two decades ago in October 2002.

Oracle’s stock success is partly due to the company’s role in the artificial intelligence boom. Ellison, who founded Oracle in 1977, spoke on the company’s earnings call last week about how the company is building data centers to accommodate the increasing demand for generative AI.

“We are literally building the smallest, most portable, most affordable cloud data centers all the way up to 200-megawatt data centers, ideal for training very large language models and keeping them up to date,” Ellison said on the call.

Oracle said last week that it would partner with Amazon’s cloud computing unit to enable its database services on dedicated hardware. Over the past year, it has struck similar partnerships with Microsoft and Google, the other two leading cloud infrastructure companies.

— CNBC’s Jordan Novet and Ari Levy contributed to this report.