Larry Ellison, chairman and co-founder of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco on Oct. 1, 2017.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
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.
Lisa Su, president and CEO of AMD, talks about the AMD EPYC processor during a keynote address at the 2019 CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., January 9, 2019.
Steve Marcus | Reuters
AMDsaid on Wednesday that its board of directors approved $6 billion in share buybacks. The stock climbed 6%.
The authorization is in addition to $4 billion in existing approved share repurchases, the company said.
“Our expanded share repurchase program reflects the Board’s confidence in AMD’s strategic direction, growth prospects, and ability to consistently generate strong free cash flow,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said in a statement.
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AMD, the most important artificial intelligence chip company aside from Nvidia, reported 96 cents in earnings per share on $7.44 billion in revenue in its fiscal first quarter.
AMD announced a deal potentially worth $10 billion in investment on Tuesday to support an AI company called Humain in Saudi Arabia with chips. Su was in Saudi Arabia this week to announce the deal.
AMD said that it would provide graphics processors for AI as well as central processors needed to build AI servers to Humain, which is also buying Nvidia processors. Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya added $10 to his price target for AMD, bringing it to $130 per share, on the news.
A file photo of Hiroki Totoki, Sony Group Corporation executive, delivering a keynote address at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, on January 6, 2025.
Artur Widak | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Sony Group shares rose about 2% Wednesday in volatile trading after the Japanese conglomerate announced a 250 billion yen ($1.7 billion) share buyback and operating income beat estimates.
Operating income for the last three months of the financial year came in at 203.6 billion yen, beating mean analyst estimates of 192.2 billion yen, though it was down 11% from the same period last year.
In the earnings report, the Japanese-based electronics, entertainment and finance company announced a stock buyback of shares worth 250 billion yen.
Sony also provided details on a partial spinoff of its financial unit. The company plans to distribute slightly more than 80% of the shares of common stock of the spinoff to shareholders of Sony Group through dividends.
The financial unit will list its financial operation this year and will be classified as a discontinued operation in Sony’s accounting from the current quarter, the company added.
However, Sony’s outlook for the current financial year ending in March was lackluster.
The company forecasted its operating profit to rise a slight 0.3% to 1.28 trillion yen, after flagging a 100 billion yen hit from U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.
Yet, Sony clarified that the estimated tariff impact did not reflect the trade deal made between the U.S. and China on May 12 and that the actual impact could vary significantly.