Larry Ellison's fortune rose sharply on Tuesday, moving him closer to becoming the world's richest person, after Oracle's stock price experienced its biggest one-day jump in a decade thanks to a series of big deals.
Larry Ellison's fortune rose sharply on Tuesday, moving him closer to becoming the world's richest person, after Oracle's stock price experienced its biggest one-day jump in a decade thanks to a series of big deals.
Oracle reported financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 that analysts called “normal.” Revenue remained at $2.93 billion for the quarter, and earnings per share were lower than in the same quarter last year. However, what sent the stock price soaring by almost 30% after the close of trading on Tuesday was the expected future earnings , The Register reports .
CEO Safra Katz said the company's outstanding performance obligations (RPOs) — that is, signed contracts for which payment has not yet been received — are $455 billion. She predicted that figure will increase over the next year.
“In the first quarter, we signed four multi-billion dollar contracts with three different customers,” Katz said. “As a result, our RPO increased 359% to $455 billion. It was an amazing quarter, and demand for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure continues to grow. We expect to sign several more multi-billion dollar contracts in the coming months, and our RPO will likely exceed half a trillion dollars.”
Oracle will provide more details about these deals soon, she said, but expects ongoing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure projects to drive revenue growth from $18 billion this year to $144 billion by 2031.
Much of the money is likely to come from the U.S. government. In July, Oracle signed a massive deal with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to provide cloud services, and Catz & Co. may already have several other government deals in place.
Oracle has a good relationship with the White House, and Ellison has been a longtime supporter of Trump and other Republicans. Katz had dinner with the Trumps last week.
However, it’s not just government funds that are filling Oracle’s coffers. The company is also establishing close cooperation with OpenAI, leasing its data center capacity to it. According to experts, new deals are not far off, possibly with Chinese retail giant Temu as an Oracle Cloud client.
There is also a possibility that Oracle will provide hosting services for TikTok, a deal Larry Ellison hinted at last month, along with job cuts.
“MultiCloud database revenue from Amazon, Google and Microsoft grew a whopping 1,529% in the first quarter,” Ellison said during the earnings call, referring to revenue from Oracle customers who use its database in other clouds. “We expect MultiCloud revenue to grow substantially each quarter for several years as we add 37 more data centers to our three partners, bringing the total to 71.”
The stock’s surge has boosted Ellison’s fortune to about $300 billion, making him the second-richest person on the planet, according to Bloomberg. Unlike Musk, whose fortune is bolstered by a struggling car company, a losing space project and a controversial social network, Ellison’s wealth is growing thanks to profitable businesses. This suggests he could soon overtake Elon.
