Larry Ellison, chairman and co-founder of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco on Oct. 1, 2017.
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Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison is almost $19 billion richer after the software maker he founded in 1977 forecast double-digit revenue growth for the fiscal year, lifting the stock to its sharpest rally since 2021.
Ellison owns about 1.15 billion Oracle shares, equal to around 42% of the company’s outstanding stock. With Wednesday’s increase, he now has a net worth of around $170 billion, according to Forbes, making him the fifth-richest person in the world and just behind Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
While Ellison has been out of the CEO role for a decade — he took up the title of chief technology officer in 2014 — he remains the leading figure at the company and still participates in quarterly earnings calls. On Tuesday’s call, following the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report, Ellison boasted about Oracle’s construction of data centers that can accommodate the increasing demand for generative artificial intelligence.
“We are literally building the smallest, most portable, most affordable cloud data centers all the way up to 200-megawatt data centers, ideal for training very large language models and keeping them up-to-date,” Ellison said.
Oracle shares soared 13% on Wednesday to a record $140.38, their best day since Dec. 10, 2021. Analysts at Bank of America, Barclays, Bernstein, JPMorgan and UBS raised their 12-month price targets on the stock.
Though quarterly profit and revenue fell short of Wall Street estimates, Oracle said it expects double-digit revenue growth in the new fiscal year, compared with an increase of 6% in the year that ended on May 31. Oracle said its database will become available on Google’s public cloud and that OpenAI will be able to use Microsoft’s cloud-based AI tools atop Oracle’s cloud infrastructure.
Ellison’s Oracle stake stands to increase. Later this year and next year, stock options granted to him in 2014 and 2017, when the stock price was considerably lower, will expire.
Ellison is known for lavish spending. He owned properties in California, Florida and the Hawaiian island of Lanai as of 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported. He has donated to political campaigns for decades, funded a sailing league, and is the owner of the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in California.
A close friend of Elon Musk, Ellison joined and then left the board of Tesla. He was reportedly planning to help finance Skydance Media’s proposed merger with Paramount Global. His son, David Ellison, is Skydance Media’s founder and CEO.
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro chastised Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday over the company’s response to pressure from the Trump administration to make more of its products outside of China.
“Going back to the first Trump term, Tim Cook has continually asked for more time in order to move his factories out of China,” Navarro said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “I mean it’s the longest-running soap opera in Silicon Valley.”
CNBC has reached out to Apple for comment on Navarro’s criticism.
President Donald Trump has in recent months ramped up demands for Apple to move production of its iconic iPhone to the U.S. from overseas. Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has increasingly boosted production in India, partly to avoid the higher cost of Trump’s tariffs.
Trump in May warned Apple would have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the U.S. In separate remarks, Trump said he told Cook, “I don’t want you building in India.”
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Analysts and supply chain experts have argued it would be impossible for Apple to completely move iPhone production to the U.S. By some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as $3,500.
Navarro said Cook isn’t shifting production out of China quickly enough.
“With all these new advanced manufacturing techniques and the way things are moving with AI and things like that, it’s inconceivable to me that Tim Cook could not produce his iPhones elsewhere around the world and in this country,” Navarro said.
Apple currently makes very few products in the U.S. During Trump’s first term, Apple extended its commitment to assemble the $3,000 Mac Pro in Texas.
In February, Apple said it would spend $500 billion within the U.S., including on assembling some AI servers.
CoreWeave founders Brian Venturo, at left in sweatshirt, and Mike Intrator slap five after ringing the opening bell at Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence hyperscaler CoreWeave said Monday it will acquire Core Scientific, a leading data center infrastructure provider, in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $9 billion.
Coreweave stock fell about 4% on Monday while Core Scientific stock plummeted about 20%. Shares of both companies rallied at the end of June after the Wall Street Journal reported that talks were underway for an acquisition.
The deal strengthens CoreWeave’s position in the AI arms race by bringing critical infrastructure in-house.
CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said the move will eliminate $10 billion in future lease obligations and significantly enhance operating efficiency.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, pending regulatory and shareholder approval.
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The deal expands CoreWeave’s access to power and real estate, giving it ownership of 1.3 gigawatts of gross capacity across Core Scientific’s U.S. data center footprint, with another gigawatt available for future growth.
Core Scientific has increasingly focused on high-performance compute workloads since emerging from bankruptcy and relisting on the Nasdaq in 2024.
Core Scientific shareholders will receive 0.1235 CoreWeave shares for each share they hold — implying a $20.40 per-share valuation and a 66% premium to Core Scientific’s closing stock price before deal talks were reported.
After closing, Core Scientific shareholders will own less than 10% of the combined company.
Two young men stand inside a shopping mall in front of a large illuminated Apple logo seen through a window in Chongqing, China, on June 4, 2025.
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Apple on Monday appealed what it called an “unprecedented” 500 million euro ($586 million) fine issued by the European Union for violating the bloc’s Digital Markets Act.
“As our appeal will show, the EC [European Commission] is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users,” the company said in a statement. “We implemented this to avoid punitive daily fines and will share the facts with the Court.”
Apple recently made changes to its App Store‘s European policies that the company said would be in compliance with the DMA and would avoid the fines.
The Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, announced its fine in April, saying that Apple “breached its anti-steering obligation” under the DMA with restrictions on the App Store.
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“Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store,” the commission wrote. “Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers.”
Under the DMA, tech giants like Apple and Google are required to allow businesses to inform end-users of offers outside their platform — including those at different prices or with different conditions.
Companies like Epic Games and Spotify have complained about restrictions within the App Store that make it harder for them to communicate alternative payment methods to iOS users.
Apple typically takes a 15%-30% cut on in-app purchases.