Key Takeaways
- Oracle founder Larry Ellison, 81, lost $25 billion of his net worth on Thursday.
- The plunge followed Oracle’s latest earnings report, which showed strong year-over-year growth but still fell short of Wall Street revenue expectations.
- Oracle’s stock fell roughly 11% to 13% following the report, dragging Ellison’s fortune down with it.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison, 81, lost $25 billion of his fortune in a single day, marking one of the largest single-day wealth declines of the year.
The drop, which occurred on Thursday, came after Oracle’s stock fell roughly 11% to 13% after its latest earnings report spooked investors with heavy AI spending.
Oracle reported fiscal second-quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday that showed strong 14% year-over-year revenue growth, but still fell short of Wall Street revenue expectations. The company disclosed a large increase in capital expenditures that was well above analyst forecasts, spending about $12 billion during the quarter on AI data centers, higher than the $8.3 billion Wall Street predicted.
The combination of weaker revenue and higher-than-expected AI spending led to the drop in Oracle’s share price, erasing $80 billion in market value on Thursday. Investors wanted to see Oracle turn AI spending into revenue quickly, per Bloomberg.
Because Ellison owns about 40% of Oracle, that share-price decline on Thursday translated directly into one of the largest one-day wealth losses ever recorded on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The Index estimated that it dropped Ellison’s net worth to around $258 billion, pushing him from second place to third place among the world’s richest people. Elon Musk and Larry Page are now the two richest people in the world, with net worths of $462 billion and $268 billion, respectively.
Ellison was briefly the world’s richest person in September following a strong Oracle earnings report that drove the company’s stock price up. Even after the plunge, Ellison remains wealthier than most tech peers, including Jeff Bezos, who has a net worth of $253 billion according to the Index, and Mark Zuckerberg, who is worth $231 billion.
Other tech billionaires have faced similar or worse losses. In April, Zuckerberg lost about $24 billion of his net worth, while Musk lost $35 billion in three days, per Business Insider.
If Oracle’s AI bets begin to pay off faster and its stock recovers, Ellison’s net worth could rebound quickly. However, continued concerns about AI spending could keep pressure on both the shares and his fortune.
Ellison founded Oracle in 1977 and served as CEO until 2014 before stepping into the chief technology officer role. Since ChatGPT’s debut in November 2022, Oracle has experienced significant growth among business customers that are eager to use the company’s cloud computing services.
On Friday, the drop in Oracle stock continued, with shares down about 3.8% at the time of writing. The stock was down about 14.5% over the past month. Oracle is the 17th-most-valuable company in the world.
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Key Takeaways
- Oracle founder Larry Ellison, 81, lost $25 billion of his net worth on Thursday.
- The plunge followed Oracle’s latest earnings report, which showed strong year-over-year growth but still fell short of Wall Street revenue expectations.
- Oracle’s stock fell roughly 11% to 13% following the report, dragging Ellison’s fortune down with it.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison, 81, lost $25 billion of his fortune in a single day, marking one of the largest single-day wealth declines of the year.
The drop, which occurred on Thursday, came after Oracle’s stock fell roughly 11% to 13% after its latest earnings report spooked investors with heavy AI spending.
