The Database King Returns

Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, has joined the exclusive $200 billion club, becoming the first database billionaire to reach this milestone. Oracle's cloud infrastructure business has exploded thanks to massive AI training contracts with OpenAI, xAI, and Meta. The company now powers 40% of the world's largest AI models and has become the preferred cloud provider for enterprise AI deployments. Ellison's 42% stake in Oracle is now worth $210 billion, making him the fourth-richest person in the world behind Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, and Jeff Bezos.

Ellison's return to the spotlight comes after years of focusing on sailing and philanthropy. Oracle's stock has risen 90% year-to-date, driven by the company's pivot to AI cloud services. The database giant has signed $50 billion in new contracts with AI companies and now holds more enterprise cloud market share than AWS in several key verticals. Ellison's aggressive acquisition strategy has paid off handsomely, with the $28 billion Cerner healthcare acquisition now generating $12 billion in annual revenue.

The Oracle of AI

Oracle's success in AI has been surprising to many observers who viewed the company as a legacy database provider. Ellison's vision of autonomous databases and AI-integrated enterprise software has proven prescient. The company's Oracle Autonomous Database now manages 95% of its customer workloads with zero human intervention. OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) has become the go-to platform for AI model training due to its cost advantages and specialized GPU clusters. Ellison's decision to focus on enterprise rather than consumer AI has created a moat that competitors struggle to breach.