Larry Ellison Makes $15 Billion From Oracle’s Best Day of 2021

Oracle founder Larry Ellison posted a $15 billion profit on Tuesday after his software company’s stock had its best day in more than two years and closed at a record high.

Ellison, who started Oracle in 1977, remains the company’s largest shareholder, with a stake valued at roughly $146 billion after the latest breakout. He is the fifth richest person in the world, according to Forbesright behind Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and before Warren Buffett.

Oracle shares jumped 12% to $127.54 after the software provider reported fiscal third-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ expectations. Revenue in the company’s cloud services and license support segment rose 12%, beating forecasts.

While Oracle was a latecomer to cloud infrastructure and on the cusp of the latest artificial intelligence boom, increased demand for the company’s AI technology allows Ellison to tout his company’s expansion into the industry’s hottest market.

“We’re building an AI data center in the United States where you can park eight Boeing 747s nose-to-tail in that one data center,” Ellison, who still serves as Oracle’s chief technology officer, said on the earnings call. “We’re building a large number of data centers, and some of those data centers are small, but some of these data centers are the largest AI data centers in the world.”

Over the past year, Oracle shares have jumped 52%, boosting Ellison’s fortune by about $50 billion. The stock has outperformed the S&P 500, which has gained 34% over the past 12 months.

Unlike on Amazon Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison held onto all their shares instead of selling off chunks. According to FactSet, Ellison’s last trade in Oracle stock was a purchase of 7,000 shares in 2022, and he hasn’t sold any since 2016.

Bezos has sold over 50,000 Amazon shares this year. Most recently, in mid-February, he unloaded more than 14 million shares of his company, valued at approximately $2.4 billion.

WATCHING: Oracle shares jump on third-quarter earnings