Larry Ellison Surpasses Elon Musk as World’s Richest Man
Larry Ellison, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Oracle, has now overtaken Elon Musk to become the richest person in the world. This milestone was reached after Oracle’s shares skyrocketed in early trading, marking the company’s largest single-day increase ever. The sudden surge added nearly $100 billion to Ellison’s fortune, pushing his net worth to an estimated $393 billion, while Musk now sits just behind him at $384 billion.
What makes this moment even more striking is the scale of the rise. Oracle’s shares jumped by more than 40% to $340 a share, giving the business software company a valuation of nearly $1 trillion. Ellison, who owns about 41% of Oracle, was the biggest beneficiary of this windfall. It wasn’t just a good day for him—it was the single largest one-day wealth increase ever recorded on Bloomberg’s billionaire index.
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Ellison’s wealth is not limited to Oracle. At 81 years old, he also has a wide portfolio of assets, including a stake in Tesla, where Musk serves as chief executive, as well as ownership of the Indian Wells Open tennis tournament, a sailing team, and even the Hawaiian island of Lanai. His influence stretches well beyond Silicon Valley, as he has also been a political supporter of Donald Trump and appeared with him at events such as the launch of the Stargate project, a $500 billion initiative aimed at building AI infrastructure in the United States.
Musk and Ellison’s relationship is an interesting subplot here. The two men are friends, and Ellison has often been described as a mentor to Musk. He once sat on Tesla’s board and even contributed $1 billion toward Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now known as X. Musk has been a frequent visitor to Ellison’s island retreat, showing just how closely linked their personal and professional lives have been.
What’s driving Oracle’s remarkable growth is the booming demand for cloud services, especially from artificial intelligence companies that need massive computing capacity. Firms like OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, rely heavily on such infrastructure. Ellison himself stated boldly on Oracle’s earnings call that the company intends to build and operate more cloud data centers than all of its competitors combined. This confidence, paired with projections that Oracle’s cloud revenue could surge from $18 billion this year to $144 billion in four years, has clearly energized investors.
It’s worth noting that Ellison’s current dominance is partly due to financial engineering. Over the years, Oracle has spent more than $140 billion on stock buybacks, shrinking its share count and boosting Ellison’s stake from 22% to 41%. That strategy, combined with steady dividends—about half a billion dollars per quarter just for Ellison—helped cement his position.
For Musk, this marks the latest shift in a billionaire rivalry that has seen him trade places with Jeff Bezos and Bernard Arnault over the past few years. But for now, Larry Ellison stands at the top, riding a wave fueled not only by Oracle’s growth but also by the larger story of AI reshaping the technology landscape.
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