Larry Ellison lost $10.4 billion on Tuesday after Oracle shares fell more than 4% in the afternoon, trimming his Forbes Real-Time net worth to $249.7 billion and dropping him to the No. 5 spot on the list behind Jeff Bezos.
Forbes placed Jeff Bezos at $252 billion; Sergey Brin and Larry Page remained well ahead at $272.7 billion and $295.6 billion, respectively. Ellison’s one-day decline was part of a much larger move: his fortune has fallen roughly $47 billion over the last week, from an estimated $296 billion last Tuesday.
The driver is Oracle stock. Shares were down about 17% over the past week and have slid nearly 41% from a September 2025 peak. Ellison owns roughly a 41% stake in Oracle, so sharp share-price swings translate directly into commensurate changes in his net worth.
The timing sharpens the stakes. Oracle is set to report quarterly results after the market close on Wednesday, and analysts expect $1.96 in earnings per share and $19.1 billion in revenue. FactSet projects a 15% year-over-year rise in EPS and a 20% revenue increase; analysts are also watching a backlog forecast expected near $661 billion versus the $553 billion Oracle reported in March.
The recent slide undercuts a dramatic run-up tied to demand for AI infrastructure. Oracle’s stock had surged earlier after executives projected cloud infrastructure revenue rising toward $144 billion by 2030 — a narrative that helped lift Ellison last year to at least $400 billion, making him the second person after Elon Musk to cross that threshold. The current pullback, however, has erased tens of billions in a matter of days.
Market reaction to Wednesday’s report will be pivotal. If Oracle meets or beats FactSet’s EPS and revenue expectations and posts a substantially larger backlog, the stock could stabilize and recover some of the week’s losses; a miss or weaker guidance would likely deepen the selloff and further erode Ellison’s stake-driven fortune.
Beyond headline rankings, the move highlights how concentrated ownership in a single stock can magnify fortunes for the ultrawealthy. Ellison’s 41% holding ties his personal balance sheet closely to Oracle’s quarterly performance and the market’s reassessment of cloud and AI growth projections.
Ellison’s drop to No. 5 underscores a broader point about wealth measurements that hinge on market values: they can change in an afternoon. The immediate question now is concrete and narrow — will Oracle’s earnings report after the close on Wednesday be strong enough to reverse a week that wiped out roughly $47 billion of Ellison’s net worth, or will the company’s results accelerate the decline?
