Oracle co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison has reclaimed the No. 2 spot on Forbes's real-time billionaire list, trailing only Elon Musk after leapfrogging Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.

Thanks to [1]better-than-expected results from Oracle's fiscal fourth quarter ended in May 31, shares jumped 14%, and Ellison's net worth surged roughly $25 billion to $242 billion by midday Thursday, marking the largest single-day gain on Forbes's real-time billionaire [2]list .

On the June 12 earnings call, he told investors demand for cloud was "astronomical" and "insatiable," even quoting one customer: "We'll take all the capacity you have, wherever it is."

[3]

Oracle’s share of the cloud market stands at around 3 percent, well behind AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and China’s Alibaba.

[4]

[5]

Ellison co-founded Oracle, initially called Software Development Laboratories (SDL), nearly 50 years ago. Its initial product was a relational database based on the [6]then-new relational model , pioneered by IBM’s Edgar Codd. IBM already had a successful database at the time — the hierarchical IMS — affording Oracle the opportunity to exploit the market for relational databases, which still dominate today. Oracle built an enterprise application portfolio largely by acquisition, most notably [7]the protracted, hostile 2005 takeover of PeopleSoft in 2005, after the HR and finance software outfit had acquired JD Edwards in 2003.

[8]Oracle scores cloud customer – maybe China's TEMU – that wants any available server, anytime, anywhere

[9]Elon Musk pukes over pork-filled budget bill with Tesla subsidies on the line

[10]Oracle's $40B Nvidia hardware haul may be too hot for OpenAI's Abilene, Texas DC to handle

[11]Larry Ellison wants to put all America's data, including DNA, in one big Oracle system for AI to study

Toward the tail end of the dot-com boom, Ellison often appeared in the [12]number two spot , but briefly topped usual winner Bill Gates for a brief period in 2000, according to the [13]New York Post . Fast-forward to midday Thursday, and Ellison's fortune hit $242 billion—just enough to nudge out Meta's Mark Zuckerberg (40 years younger, $239 billion) and Amazon's Jeff Bezos (20 years younger, $228 billion) on Forbes's real-time rich list. Gates is at number 12.

All are well behind Musk, the electric car, space rocket, and social media magnate, whose net worth is around $406 billion. The friend of Ellison - and one-time friend of President Donald Trump - is one of the few people in the world who can be sanguine about losing $1 billion, or 0.3 percent of his wealth.

Beyond today's AI buzz, it might surprise some that the world's No. 2 billionaire is an 80-year-old whose tech empire began in the mid-'70s.

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And there is no sign of Ellison retiring any time soon. But if he does, at least [15]he owns a Hawaiian island on which he can live out the rest of his days. ®

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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/oracle_q4_2025/

[2] https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#647f22763d78

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aEyfdlOHEtX_xYHVt_aZDQAAAIQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aEyfdlOHEtX_xYHVt_aZDQAAAIQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aEyfdlOHEtX_xYHVt_aZDQAAAIQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/31/fifty_years_of_sql/

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/02/twenty_years_since_oracle_bought_peoplesoft/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/oracle_q4_2025/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/05/trump_musk_face_off_budget_bill/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/27/oracle_openai_40b/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/12/larry_ellison_wants_all_data/

[12] https://www.forbes.com/2000/04/24/mu7.html

[13] https://nypost.com/2000/04/28/ellison-wins-title-oracle-chief-overtakes-gates-in-riches-run/

[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aEyfdlOHEtX_xYHVt_aZDQAAAIQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[15] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/14/forbes_oracle_ellison_health_data/

[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/