00:00Well, we start in the world of tech, where we're well used to huge numbers and super-rich tycoons.
00:05But today, we're on track for a new record, even by those lofty standards.
00:10Veteran tech boss Larry Ellison, founder and top shareholder of software giant Oracle,
00:16has seen his net worth soar by $70 billion in one day.
00:21You heard that right.
00:22That's after Oracle reported surging revenues after the Wall Street bell,
00:26driven by AI demand for cloud computing.
00:30Mr. Ellison now has a net worth of $364 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index,
00:38after the biggest one-day jump in wealth ever recorded.
00:41That puts him in striking distance of overtaking this man, Elon Musk, to become the world's richest man.
00:48Mr. Musk is a mere $20 billion ahead, with a net worth of $384 billion.
00:53Now, all this, though, may add to fears in the investment world that the AI craze
00:59is becoming a bubble set to burst.
01:02Well, one man who had a ringside seat on that bubble bursting in the early 2000s is a very familiar face to us all here at Business Today.
01:10Russ Mould, investment director at A.J. Bell.
01:13Russ, great to have you with us.
01:16Larry Ellison will be familiar to some from the 80s, a big name in tech,
01:20and proving he's still got his finger on the pulse.
01:24Yeah, I mean, Oracle has always traditionally been a business software publishing business,
01:28and a very good one, too, I may say.
01:30But where the excitement is now is that it's getting into data sensors, servers,
01:34and providing cloud computing power to help fuel large language models in these enormous databases
01:40that fuel generative artificial intelligence.
01:44And it's been flagging multi-billion dollar contracts from a range of companies, including OpenAI.
01:49And it says that, you know, other key customers include people like Microsoft as well.
01:54So it's pulling in huge orders.
01:57It now claims it's got a backlog of business of $455 billion.
02:01That's seven times its current forecast annual revenues.
02:04So you can see why people are getting quite excited.
02:07He's delivering AI at scale, isn't he, Larry Ellison?
02:11It was worked out by the team here that he's never quite reached the first spot.
02:15He's always been second place in the richest persons index.
02:18He was behind Bill Gates back in the 80s.
02:21Just remind us a bit about his journey, about Larry Ellison.
02:25I mean, he's been a phenomenally successful business entrepreneur for a very long time.
02:28I think he used to fly fighter jets and sail yachts for a hobby on a weekend, which are pretty expensive pastimes.
02:34But Oracle has been a tremendously profitable software company.
02:37Its shares, again, did go up and did go down a lot during the technology and media and telecoms bubble.
02:41But this has been one of the long-term survivors in that industry, and he too.
02:46Ross, briefly, you were a senior tech banker in the 90s.
02:48You saw the bubble grow.
02:50What's fueling this one, and how long will it last?
02:53Clearly, you've got a fantastic new, exciting technology.
02:56And that's where so many of these bubbles start.
02:57We saw it with the Internet in the 2000s.
02:59We saw it with the Nifty Fifty in the 1970s.
03:01We saw it with a range of other companies in the 1960s in America.
03:05And these bubbles generally, if this is a bubble, tend to focus on a key idea.
03:09It's almost indistinguishable from magic at the time.
03:12And people fall over themselves to pay for growth.
03:14You're seeing that right now.
03:15And when you do see some of these large sums being bandied about right now, it does make you a little bit nervous.
03:20The Magnificent Seven are around a third of current U.S. market capitalization.
03:24A fifth of global market capitalization.
03:26And we've seen that sort of concentration before.
03:29Just the sheer high growth expectations evolved ultimately forged their own anchor, to paraphrase Warren Buffett.
03:35Yeah, expectations to watch from the man who has seen it before, Ross Mould.
03:39Once again, thank you.
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