Larry Ellison has overtaken Elon Musk as the world’s richest person, propelled by a historic rally in Oracle Corp.’s stock that sent his fortune soaring more than $101 billion in a single day.
The software giant’s shares surged in after-hours trading on Tuesday after posting quarterly earnings that featured a sharp increase in sales and a bullish outlook for its cloud infrastructure business.
The rally carried into pre-market trading and accelerated once markets opened Wednesday, pushing Oracle’s stock up more than 39 percent by late morning in New York.
Ellison, who co-founded Oracle in 1977 and serves as its chairman and chief technology officer, holds about 1.16 billion shares, roughly 41% of the company’s outstanding stock. That stake, combined with Oracle’s record-breaking gains, lifted Ellison’s net worth to $405 billion as of 11 a.m. ET, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Musk’s fortune, by comparison, stood at about $384 billion.
What we know
It marks the single largest one-day increase ever recorded by Bloomberg’s wealth index, showing the sheer scale of Oracle’s resurgence and Ellison’s central role in it.
The 81-year-old billionaire began Tuesday with a net worth of roughly $294 billion before Oracle’s earnings report triggered a surge in investor enthusiasm. His wealth first spiked $70 billion in after-hours trading before extending to a triple-digit gain after Wednesday’s open.
The news dislodges Musk from the top of the billionaire rankings, ending his nearly year-long run as the world’s wealthiest person. Musk, who has seen his fortune pressured by a 13 percent decline in Tesla’s stock this year, first ascended to the top spot in 2021 but has rotated in and out of the lead with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault.
Backstory
Oracle’s momentum highlights its growing stature in the global cloud computing race, where it is positioning itself against giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. The company’s latest results showed a surge in bookings and emphasized opportunities tied to artificial intelligence, helping fuel investor confidence in its long-term strategy.
The financial leap represents a dramatic shift for Ellison, who once lagged far behind Silicon Valley’s biggest fortunes. His rise comes as Oracle has transformed itself from a legacy database provider into a significant player in enterprise cloud and AI infrastructure, a transformation that investors now appear to be rewarding in unprecedented fashion.
For Musk, who still commands vast stakes in Tesla, SpaceX, and other ventures, Wednesday’s shake-up is less a definitive end than a reminder of how swiftly fortunes can change in today’s volatile markets. But for Ellison, it is the first time he has claimed the title of the world’s richest man.
