On Sept. 10, Elon Musk briefly lost the title of world’s richest person to Larry Ellison when Oracle’s blowout earnings report boosted its co-founder’s total wealth by $89 billion. And while the voluble Tesla chief executive regained the top spot by the closing bell, that it happened at all was a sign Wall Street had underestimated 48-year-old Oracle and the comparatively understated man behind it.
Known for its database software, the company has recently found success in the red-hot cloud computing market and is emerging as a key provider of artificial intelligence processing capacity, competing against the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet. It’s also become a central partner to ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, and after more than a year of negotiations, the US and China have struck a framework agreement to hive off its US operations to a consortium that includes Oracle. In this Bloomberg Originals mini-documentary, we explain the details of how Oracle forced investors to reassess its prospects, and what September’s string of surprise revelations could mean for the company’s future.