<a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/2022/11/13/oracle-plans-significant-investment-in-middle-east-as-cloud-competition-intensifies/" target="_blank">Oracle</a><a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/2022/11/13/oracle-plans-significant-investment-in-middle-east-as-cloud-competition-intensifies/" target="_blank"> founder</a> Larry Ellison is now the world’s fourth-richest person — edging past <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/future/2023/05/10/bill-gates-cop28-needs-oil-and-gas-at-the-table/" target="_blank">Microsoft founder Bill Gates</a> — as the <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/2022/10/21/oracle-teams-up-with-jp-morgan-and-fedex-to-automate-end-to-end-business-processes/" target="_blank">company</a><a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/2022/10/21/oracle-teams-up-with-jp-morgan-and-fedex-to-automate-end-to-end-business-processes/" target="_blank"> reported</a> a more than 3 per cent annual increase in its 2023 fiscal fourth-quarter net profit. Mr Ellison, 78, who stepped down as Oracle’s chief executive in 2014, has a net worth of $129.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. This is the first time Mr Ellison has surpassed Mr Gates, whose net worth is<b> </b>currently $129.1 billion. This is also the first time Mr Ellison has been ranked higher than the fifth on the list. Texas-headquartered Oracle reported a net income of $3.3 billion in three months to May 31, driven by a strong performance in its infrastructure business and cloud services division. Total quarterly revenues surged 17 per cent year-on-year to $13.8 billion. Cloud services and licence support revenues jumped 23 per cent annually to $9.4 billion. Oracle’s stock price surged almost 6 per cent to trade at $123.33 a share in pre-market trading on Tuesday. It has increased almost 40 per cent since the start of the year and the company’s market valuation stood at $314.34 billion as of Monday's market close. The company’s net income for the full 2023 financial year rose 26.8 per cent to $8.5 billion. Its revenue increased 18 per cent to a record $50 billion in the 12-month period. “Oracle’s revenue reached an all-time high of $50 billion in financial year 2023,” said Oracle chief executive Safra Catz. “Annual revenue growth was led by our cloud applications and infrastructure businesses which grew at a combined rate of 50 per cent in constant currency." The company’s infrastructure growth rate has been accelerating — with 63 per cent growth for the full year, and 77 per cent growth in the fourth quarter. “<a href="https://www.oracle.com/ph/a/ocom/docs/ipaper-cloud-essentials-platform.pdf" target="_blank">Oracle’s Gen2 cloud </a>has quickly become the number one choice for running generative AI [artificial intelligence] workloads,” said Mr Ellison. “Why? Because Oracle has the highest performance, lowest cost GPU [graphics processing unit] cluster technology in the world.” Oracle Gen 2 cloud infrastructure is a public cloud specifically for enterprise applications and databases. It includes tools and utilities for constructing new cloud-native and mobile apps, all on a unified platform, the company said. “Cutting edge companies doing LLM [large language model] development … [and] other AI development companies have recently signed contracts to purchase more than $2 billion of capacity in Oracle’s Gen 2 Cloud,” Mr Ellison said. The company’s operating cash flow stood at $17.2 billion during fiscal year 2023, up almost 80 per cent. The board of directors also declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.40 per share of outstanding common stock. This dividend will be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on July 12, with a payment date of July 26, Oracle said.