"Assets of 226 Trillion Won"... 'This Person' Surpasses Bill Gates to Become World's 5th Richest

Oracle Founder Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison, the founder of the American cloud platform company Oracle, has surpassed Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft (MS), to become the world's 5th richest person.

Bloomberg reported on the 10th (local time) that Ellison's net worth increased by $14.1 billion (about 18.9 trillion KRW) to reach $168 billion (about 225.8 trillion KRW), placing him 5th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This means he has surpassed Bill Gates' net worth of $158 billion.

[Image source=AP Yonhap News]

With this, only four billionaires remain ahead of Ellison. The leader is Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, whose net worth reaches $248 billion. Following him are Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon ($202 billion), Bernard Arnault, chairman of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) ($180 billion), and Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta Platforms ($179 billion).

Ellison's net worth has increased by $45.1 billion this year. This is the third largest increase after Meta CEO Zuckerberg ($51.4 billion) and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang ($51 billion). A significant portion of Ellison's assets is in Oracle stock, and he also holds about $10 billion worth of Tesla shares. He is especially known for his luxurious lifestyle, including owning about 98% of the sixth largest island in Hawaii.

Earlier, Oracle stated in its earnings announcement that "thanks to AI demand, the cloud computing business is performing well, and we are focusing on expanding our cloud infrastructure business to compete with the 'Big 3' in the cloud sector?Amazon, MS, and Google."

Oracle's first-quarter (June to August) earnings per share ($1.39) also exceeded expert expectations ($1.33). Safra Catz, Oracle CEO, explained the background of the strong performance by saying, "As cloud services have become our core business, the growth rate of operating profit and earnings per share has accelerated."

On this day, Oracle's stock price on the New York Stock Exchange closed at $155.89, up 11.44% from the previous session. It even reached $160.52 at one point during the session. Both the intraday and closing prices were record highs. The stock has risen about 48% so far this year.