Amid workforce restructuring, Oracle CEO Safra Catz’s wealth jumps $412m

Oracle’s chief executive Safra Catz added more than $400m to her fortune in a matter of hours this week as the software giant’s shares surged to near-record levels.

The 63-year-old executive, one of the world’s wealthiest self-made women, saw her net worth rise by an estimated $412m during the first six hours of trading on Wednesday, Forbes reported. The jump reflected Oracle’s stock climbing by around 40% after the company disclosed a huge pipeline of contracted revenue.

In a quarterly update on Tuesday, Oracle said it had $455bn in “remaining performance obligations” — a measure of signed contracts that are yet to be recognised in revenue. Investors responded by pushing the stock sharply higher in one of its strongest rallies since the technology boom of the late 1990s, CNBC noted.

By Wednesday afternoon, Catz’s net worth stood at roughly $3.4bn, up from $3bn at the start of the day, Forbes estimated. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison benefited even more, with his fortune swelling by more than $90bn in a single session. Bloomberg reported that Ellison is now the world’s second-richest person, with an estimated net worth of $386bn.

On Tuesday’s earnings call, Catz highlighted cloud contracts with leading artificial intelligence players as the main driver of the growth. “Clearly, we had an amazing start to the year because Oracle has become the go-to place for AI workloads,” she said. “We have signed significant cloud contracts with the who’s who of AI, including OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Nvidia, AMD, and many others.”

The wealth gains come at a time when Oracle has also been cutting jobs. Earlier this year, the company announced layoffs across several business units as part of a broader restructuring effort aimed at streamlining operations and reducing costs, moves that have affected employees in the United States and abroad, according to Reuters.

Catz has been central to Oracle’s strategy for more than two decades. She joined in 1999 after a career on Wall Street, quickly advancing to the board in 2000 and becoming president in 2004. She built a reputation as a tough dealmaker, orchestrating Oracle’s acquisitions of rivals including PeopleSoft for $10.3bn in 2004 and Sun Microsystems for $7.4bn in 2009.

She became co-chief executive alongside Mark Hurd in 2014 when Ellison stepped aside. Since Hurd’s death in 2019, she has led the company alone. Under her tenure, Oracle shares have risen more than eight-fold, and she has frequently appeared among America’s highest-paid executives. In 2022, she received $138m in compensation, largely from stock options. Last year, filings showed she earned just under $6.5m in total pay.

Catz, born in Israel and raised in Massachusetts, graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania before working as an investment banker. She has also been active in public life, serving on the Homeland Security Advisory Council alongside leaders such as General Motors’ Mary Barra and Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan.