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- At 80, Oracle founder Larry Ellison has overtaken Mark Zuckerberg to become the world’s second-richest person, with a net worth of $251 billion—up nearly $60 billion in 2025 alone. His wealth surge follows Oracle’s strong earnings and growing AI investments, including a $3 billion expansion in Europe and its central role in President Trump’s Stargate initiative, which will channel $500 billion into AI infrastructure.
Larry Ellison has surpassed Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth, making him the second-richest person on the planet at the age of 80.
Ellison’s net worth now sits at $251 billion, having gained nearly $60 billion in 2025 alone, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The founder’s wealth comes courtesy of his 40% stake in database company Oracle, which he launched in 1977 and is up 41% for the year to date, with a huge rally over the past fortnight.
Like Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang, Ellison wealth has ballooned as policy continues to favor artificial intelligence stocks.
Amid volatility in the market under Trump 2.0, AI stocks have already scored some wins—most recently, with Huang confirming that the government had permitted his company to start shipping advanced chips to China.
But Ellison was also one of the tech titans who stood by the president’s side when the White House announced Stargate, a project aimed at catapulting the U.S. ahead of any competition in the AI space.
Oracle, along with SoftBank, OpenAI, and MGX, are initial equity founders in the organization which will invest $500 billion into AI infrastructure over the next four years.
Oracle and OpenAI are further involved in the project as key technology partners alongside Arm, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
But Oracle’s rally over recent weeks came under its own steam, announcing blockbuster end-of-year results and then doubling down on AI investments.
In its fiscal full year results shared in May, Oracle revealed Q4 revenues of $15.9 billion, up 11%, with remaining performance obligations up 41% to $138 billion.
Yesterday, the company further doubled down on its commitment to AI infrastructure, accelerating the industry’s growth globally by announcing a $3 billion investment in Germany and the Netherlands to boost cloud services and AI.
However, although investors are flocking to Oracle, analysts remain hedged about how high the company can fly.
In a June note published following Oracle’s financial results, Goldman Sachs’s analysts maintained a ‘neutral’ rating.
They explained: “While we are encouraged by the clear OCI [Oracle Cloud Infrastructure] demand momentum, we continue to see risk that Oracle may over-index investments to the low-margin and capital-intensive training cycle, which may weigh on FCF generation for the foreseeable future.”
Jensen Huang’s net worth also leaps above Warren Buffett’s
As bulls continue to back AI as the major driver behind extended PE ratios, Huang has similarly seen his net worth fly to the point of leapfrogging Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Warren Buffett.
At the time of writing, the Nvidia founder’s net worth sits at $149 billion—up more than $34 billion for year—while Buffett sits at $141 billion.
Ellison amends commitment to the Giving Pledge
Ellison also announced his intention this week to amend his commitment to the Giving Pledge, a promise made by some of the world’s wealthiest people to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes.
Ellison publicly signed the pledge—launched by Bill Gates, his ex-wife Melinda French Gates, and Buffett—in 2010 promising to give away some 95% of his wealth.
In an update this week, Ellison confirmed his commitment to dispensing his resources for humane work and revealed the launch of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) at the University of Oxford.
Posting on X, Ellison wrote he believes giving to nonprofit organizations to pursue public good remains important, but added: “There are additional ways that I would like to invest my time and resources in giving back to the world we share.”
He explained: “EIT’s humane endeavors include transforming healthcare by designing and distributing a new generation of life-saving drugs, combating world hunger by engineering higher yielding crops and building a global network of low-cost indoor growing systems, and slowing climate change by developing efficient clean energy generation and storage systems.
“So, I am amending my giving pledge and promising to do more—by concentrating my resources on the Institute. I believe this will improve our chances of delivering practical solutions to the problems of hunger, healthcare and climate change.”
The Ellison Institute of Technology – https://t.co/7ztkr9lwof
Years ago, along with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and others, I declared support for the Giving Pledge—because I believed and continue to believe that practicing philanthropy by giving to nonprofit organizations that…
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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