Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, has slipped sharply down the ranking of the world’s richest people, falling from second place to eighth in the space of about two months. The slide has been driven almost entirely by a slump in Oracle’s share price.
The reversal is large. At his peak earlier in the year Ellison was ranked second only to Elon Musk. A sustained fall in Oracle stock has since erased tens of billions of dollars from his net worth and pushed him past several rivals, including Jeff Bezos.
Ellison’s wealth is unusually concentrated. The overwhelming majority sits in his stake in Oracle, the database and cloud company he helped found in 1977. That concentration cuts both ways: when the shares surged his wealth climbed faster than almost anyone’s, and when they fell he had little to cushion the blow.
The moves illustrate a pattern that runs through the top of the global rich list. The largest fortunes are dominated by a handful of technology stocks, so the rankings shadow their daily swings, with a weak month enough to send a founder tumbling.
For Oracle, the fall reflects investor doubts weighing on parts of the technology sector even as spending on artificial intelligence lifts others. Companies seen as central to the AI boom have soared, while those viewed as lagging have been treated more harshly.
Ellison remains extraordinarily rich, and a recovery in Oracle’s shares could reverse his decline as quickly as it came. But the episode underlines how precarious these paper fortunes can be when so much rides on a single company.
