Key Background
The AI boom is simultaneously minting and shaving fortunes at the top of the rankings, and Ellison and Page sit on opposite sides of the trade. Oracle has recast itself from a database software company into a supplier of the raw computing power running advanced AI models like ChatGPT. The market has rewarded its AI efforts richly. The cost of building that infrastructure, by contrast, has punished the companies footing the bill. Alphabet, whose stock anchors the fortunes of Page and Brin, has guided to 2026 capital spending of roughly $180 billion to $190 billion—about double its 2025 outlay and well beyond Wall Street’s expectations. The pressure intensified Monday, when Alphabet said it would raise $80 billion through a stock sale, including a $10 billion investment from Berkshire Hathaway, to keep funding the buildout. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai pointed to compute capacity in the company’s most recent earnings call as the constraint that worries him most.
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Big Number
$725 billion. That’s the combined capital expenditure the four largest cloud operators—Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon—are on course to spend, primarily on artificial intelligence, this year. The number doubles last year’s spend, and analysts expect it to surpass $1 trillion. It is the wave lifting Oracle and weighing on its peers in equal measure.
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Tangent
Ellison, 80, is a Tesla shareholder and longtime ally of Musk, whose estimated $826 billion fortune towers nearly three times above his. Ellison edged past Musk to claim the top spot briefly in September 2025, topping a $400 billion fortune. Ellison also owns 98% of Hawaiian Island Lanai and has backed his son David Ellison’s Skydance and Paramount, and the combined entities’ $110 billion winning bid to acquire Warner Bros.
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