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Larry Ellison and Monica Seles and Bill Gates (back row) watch Carlos Alcaraz of Spain play against Alexander Zverev of Germany in their Quarterfinal match during the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, on March 14, 2024.

Clive Brunskill | Getty Images

It’s been a good year for Larry Ellison.

Oracle’s co-founder has gained roughly $75 billion in paper wealth as the software company he started in 1979 enjoyed its biggest stock rally since 1999 and the dot-com boom.

While the S&P 500 index has gained 27% in 2024, Oracle shares have shot up 63%, lifting Ellison’s net worth to more than $217 billion, according to Forbes, behind only Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos among the world’s richest people.

At 80, Ellison is a senior citizen in the tech industry, where his fellow billionaire founders are generally decades younger. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth has also ballooned past $200 billion, is half his age.

But Ellison has found the fountain of youth both personally and professionally. After being divorced several times, Ellison was reported this month to be involved with a 33-year-old woman. And at a meeting with analysts in Las Vegas in September, Ellison was as engaged as ever, mentioning offhand that the night before, he and his son were having dinner with his good friend Musk, who’s advising President-elect Donald Trump (then the Republican nominee) while running Tesla and his other ventures.

His big financial boon has come from Oracle, which has maneuvered its way into the artificial intelligence craze with its cloud infrastructure technology and has made its databases more accessible.

ChatGPT creator OpenAI said in June that it will use Oracle’s cloud infrastructure. Earlier this month, Oracle said it had also picked up business from Meta.

Startups, which often opt for market leader Amazon Web Services when picking a cloud, have been engaging Oracle as well. Last year, video generation startup Genmo set up a system to train an AI model with Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs, in Oracle’s cloud, CEO Paras Jain said. Genmo now relies on the Oracle cloud to produce videos based on the prompts that users type in on its website.

“Oracle produced a different product than what you can get elsewhere with GPU computing,” Jain said. The company offers “bare metal” computers that can sometimes yield better performance than architectures that employ server virtualization, he said.

In its latest earnings report earlier this month, Oracle came up short of analysts’ estimates and issued a forecast that was also weaker than Wall Street was expecting. The stock had its worst day of 2024, falling almost 7% and eating into the year’s gains.

Oracle has the best infrastructure for hosting GPUs anywhere, says Citizens JMP's Patrick Walravens

Still, Ellison was bullish for the future.

“Oracle Cloud Infrastructure trains several of the world’s most important generative AI models because we are faster and less expensive than other clouds,” Ellison said in the earnings release.

For the current fiscal year, which ends in May, Oracle is expected to record revenue growth of about 10%, which would mark its second-strongest year of expansion since 2011.

Jain said that when Genmo has challenges, he communicates with Oracle sales executives and engineers through a Slack channel. The collaboration has resulted in better reliability and performance, he said. Jain said Oracle worked with Genmo to ensure that developers could launch the startup’s Mochi open-source video generator on Oracle’s cloud hardware with a single click.

“Oracle was also more price-competitive than these large hyperscalers,” Jain said.

‘That’s going to be so easy’

Three months before its December earnings report, at the analyst event in Las Vegas, Oracle had given a rosy outlook for the next three years. Executive Vice President Doug Kehring declared that the company would produce more than $66 billion in revenue in the 2026 fiscal year, and over $104 billion in fiscal 2029. The numbers suggested acceleration, with a compound annual growth rate of over 16%, compared with 9% in the latest quarter.

After Kehring and CEO Safra Catz spoke, it was Ellison’s turn. The company’s chairman, technology chief and top shareholder strutted onto the stage in a black sweater and jeans, waved to the analysts, licked his lips and sat down. For the next 74 minutes, he answered questions from seven analysts.

“Did — did he say $104 billion?” Ellison said, referring to Kehring’s projection. Some in the crowd giggled. “That’s going to be so easy. It is kind of crazy.”

Oracle’s revenue in fiscal 2023 was just shy of $50 billion.

The new target impressed Eric Lynch, managing director of Scharf Investments, which held $167 million in Oracle shares at the end of September.

“For a company doing single digits for a decade or so, that’s unbelievable,” Lynch told CNBC in an interview.

Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison delivers a keynote address during the Oracle OpenWorld on October 22, 2018 in San Francisco, California. 

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Oracle is still far behind in cloud infrastructure. In 2023, Amazon controlled 39% share of market, followed by Microsoft at 23% and Google at 8.2%, according to industry researcher Gartner. That left Oracle with 1.4%.

But in database software, Oracle remains a stalwart. Gartner estimated that the company had 17% market share in database management systems in 2023.

Ellison’s challenge is to find opportunities for expansion.

Last year, he visited Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, for the first time to announce a partnership that would enable organizations to use Oracle’s database through Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Microsoft even installed Oracle hardware in its data centers.

In June, Oracle rolled out a similar announcement with Google. Then, in September, Oracle finally partnered with Amazon, introducing its database on AWS.

Oracle and Amazon had exchanged barbs for years. AWS introduced a database called Aurora in 2014, and Amazon worked hard to move itself off Oracle. Following a CNBC report on the effort, Ellison expressed doubt about Amazon’s ability to reach its goal. But the project succeeded.

In 2019, Amazon published a blog post titled, “Migration Complete – Amazon’s Consumer Business Just Turned off its Final Oracle Database.”

Friendlier vibe

Ellison looked back on the history between the two companies at the analyst meeting in September.

“I got kind of got cute commenting about Amazon uses Oracle, doesn’t use AWS, blah, blah,” he said. “And that hurt some people’s feelings. I probably shouldn’t have said it.”

He said a friend at a major New York bank had asked him to make sure the Oracle database works on AWS.

“I said, ‘Great. It makes sense to me,'” Ellison said.

The multi-cloud strategy should deliver gains in database market share, said analyst Siti Panigrahi of Mizuho, which has the equivalent of a buy rating on Oracle shares. Cloud deals related to AI will also help Oracle deliver on its promise for faster revenue growth, he said.

“Oracle right now has an end-to-end stack for enterprises to build their AI strategy,” said Panigrahi, who worked on applications at Oracle in the 2000s.

So far, Oracle has been mainly cutting high-value AI deals with the likes of OpenAI and Musk’s X.ai. Of Oracle’s $97 billion in remaining performance obligations, or revenue that hasn’t yet been recognized, 40% or 50% of it is tied to renting out GPUs, Panigrahi said.

Oracle didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Panigrahi predicts that a wider swath of enterprises will begin adopting AI, which will be a boon to Oracle given its hundreds of thousands of big customers.

There’s also promise in Oracle Health, the segment that came out of the company’s $28.2 billion acquisition of electronic health record software vendor Cerner in 2022.

Yoshiki Hayashi, Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison attend the Transformative Medicine of USC: Rebels with a Cause Gala in Santa Monica, California, on Oct. 24, 2019.

Joshua Blanchard | Getty Images

Unlike rival Epic, Oracle Health lost U.S. market share in 2023, according to estimates from KLAS Research. But Ellison’s connection to Musk, who is set to co-lead Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, might benefit Oracle Health “if there is a bigger push towards modernizing existing healthcare systems,” analysts at Evercore said in a note last week. They recommend buying the stock.

For now, Oracle is busy using AI to rewrite Cerner’s entire code base, Ellison said at the analyst event.

“This is another pillar for growth,” he said. “I think you haven’t quite seen it yet.”

Hours earlier, Ellison had put in a call to Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce. Benioff knows Ellison as well as anyone, having worked for him for 13 years before starting the cloud software company that’s now a big competitor.

“It was awesome,” Benioff said in a wide-ranging interview the next day, regarding his chat with Ellison.

Benioff spoke about his former boss’s latest run of fortune.

“Larry really deeply wants this,” Benioff said. “This is very important to him, that he is building a great company, what he believes is one of the most important companies in the world, and also, wealth is very important to him.”

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Tripadvisor stock surges 17% as Starboard Value builds sizable stake in online travel company

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Tripadvisor stock surges 17% as Starboard Value builds sizable stake in online travel company

The Tripadvisor logo is displayed on a tablet.

Mateusz Slodkowski | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Tripadvisor stock jumped 17% Thursday after Starboard Value revealed a more than 9% stake in the online travel company, according to a securities filing.

The position was valued at about $160 million as of Wednesday’s close.

Tripadvisor shares have been flat since the start of the year after plummeting more than 30% in 2024. Last year, the travel review and booking company said it created a special committee to explore potential options.

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Starboard Value has gained a reputation for pushing for changes such as new CEOs and cost cuts by acquiring significant shares in companies.

Most recently, the firm settled a proxy fight with Autodesk, where it gained two board seats. It has previously pushed for changes at Tinder parent Match Group, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and Salesforce.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the news late Wednesday.

Tripadvisor did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Starboard declined to comment on the news.

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Apple’s China iPhone sales grows for the first time in two years

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Apple's China iPhone sales grows for the first time in two years

People stand in front of an Apple store in Beijing, China, on April 9, 2025.

Tingshu Wang | Reuters

Apple iPhone sales in China rose in the second quarter of the year for the first time in two years, Counterpoint Research said, as the tech giant looks to turnaround its business in one of its most critical markets.

Sales of iPhones in China jumped 8% year-on-year in the three months to the end of June, according to Counterpoint Research. It’s the first time Apple has recorded growth in China since the second quarter of 2023.

Apple’s performance was boosted by promotions in May as Chinese e-commerce firms discounted Apple’s iPhone 16 models, its latest devices, Counterpoint said. The tech giant also increased trade-in prices for some iPhone.

“Apple’s adjustment of iPhone prices in May was well timed and well received, coming a week ahead of the 618 shopping festival,” Ethan Qi, associate director at Counterpoint said in a press release. The 618 shopping festival happens in China every June and e-commerce retailers offer heavy discounts.

Apple’s return to growth in China will be welcomed by investors who have seen the company’s stock fall around 15% this year as it faces a number of headwinds.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened Apple with tariffs and urged CEO Tim Cook to manufacture iPhones in America, a move experts have said would be near-impossible. China has also been a headache for Apple since Huawei, whose smartphone business was crippled by U.S. sanctions, made a comeback in late 2023 with the release of a new phone containing a more advanced chip that many had thought would be difficult for China to produce.

Since then, Huawei has aggressively launched devices in China and has even begun dipping its toe back into international markets. The Chinese tech giant has found success eating away at some of Apple’s market share in China.

Huawei’s sales rose 12% year-on-year in the second-quarter, according to Counterpoint. The firm was the biggest player in China by market share in the second quarter, followed by Vivo and then Apple in third place.

“Huawei is still riding high on core user loyalty as they replace their old phones for new Huawei releases,” Counterpoint Senior Analyst Ivan Lam said.

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Like Google, China’s biggest search player Baidu is beefing up its product with AI to fight rivals

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Like Google, China's biggest search player Baidu is beefing up its product with AI to fight rivals

Pictured here is the Ernie bot mobile interface, with the Baidu search engine home page in the background.

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Chinese tech giant Baidu has bolstered its core search platform with artificial intelligence in the biggest overhaul of the product in 10 years.

Analysts told CNBC the move was a bid to keep ahead of fast-moving rivals like DeepSeek, rather than traditional search players.

“There has been some small pressure on the search business but the focus on AI and Ernie Bot is a key move ahead,” Dan Ives, global head of tech research at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC by email. Ernie Bot is Baidu’s AI chatbot.

“Baidu is not waiting around to watch the paint dry, full steam ahead on AI,” he added.

Baidu AI overhaul

Baidu is China’s biggest search engine, but — as is also being seen by Google — the search market is being disrupted.

Users are flocking instead to AI services such as ChatGPT or DeepSeek, which shocked the world this year with its advanced model it claimed was created at a fraction of the cost of rivals.

But Kai Wang, Asia equity market strategist at Morningstar, also noted that short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou are also getting into AI search and piling pressure on Baidu.

To counter this, Baidu made some major changes to its core search product:

  • Users can now enter more than a thousand characters in the search box, versus 28 previously;
  • Questions can be asked in a more direct and conversational manner, mirroring how people now use chatbots;
  • Users can ask questions through voice but also prompt the seach engine with pictures and files;
  • Baidu has integrated its AI chatbot features, which enable users to generate photos, text and videos, into the product.

“This is more aligned with how people use ChatGPT and DeepSeek in terms of how they look for answers,” Wang said.

Outside of China, Google has also been looking to enhance its core search product with AI, highlighting how search has been under pressure from the burgeoning technology.

Baidu on the offense

Baidu was one of China’s first movers when it came to AI, releasing its first models and ChatGPT-style product Ernie Bot to the public in 2023. Since then, it has aggressively launched updated AI models.

However, the Beijing-headquartered company has also faced intense competition from fellow tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent, as well as upstarts such as DeepSeek.

These companies have also been launching new models and infusing AI into their products and Baidu’s stock has fallen behind as a result. Baidu shares have risen around 2.5% this year, versus a 30.5% surge for Alibaba and a 20% rise for Tencent.

“This is a defensive and offensive move … Baidu needs to be aggressive and perception-wise show they are not the little brother to Tencent on the AI front,” Wedbush Securities’ Ives added.

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