US: US tech billionaire Larry Ellison briefly overtook Elon Musk on Wednesday in the race to be the world’s richest person, after Oracle shares surged more than 40 percent in early trading.
Ellison, 81, holds a 41 percent stake in Oracle, the business software giant he co-founded. The rally lifted his fortune to around $393 billion, edging past Musk’s net worth of $384 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. By market close, however, Oracle stock settled at $328, trimming Ellison’s wealth to $378 billion and placing Musk back in the lead.
Oracle’s valuation peaked near $960 billion during trading, fueled by soaring demand for its cloud services from artificial intelligence firms such as OpenAI. The company has secured multi-billion-dollar contracts to provide computing capacity to power large-scale AI models, pushing its stock up 45 percent this year.
Analysts say the momentum places Oracle on track to join the elite trillion-dollar club, currently limited to Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Nvidia.
The contest between Ellison and Musk adds a new dimension to Silicon Valley’s billionaire rivalries. Musk, who leads Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter), has held the world’s richest title since 2021, apart from brief periods when he was overtaken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos or French luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault.
Ellison, long considered a mentor to Musk, sat on Tesla’s board from 2018 to 2022 and invested $1 billion in Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. The two remain close, with Musk frequently visiting Ellison’s Hawaiian island of Lanai.
Beyond Oracle, Ellison’s wealth also spans a stake in Tesla, ownership of the Indian Wells Open tennis tournament, a sailing team, and real estate, including Lanai.
Both men have strong political ties. Ellison has been a supporter of Donald Trump and appeared with him at the launch of the $500 billion Stargate project, aimed at building US-based AI infrastructure. Musk, who initially backed Trump’s 2024 campaign, has had a turbulent relationship with the President in recent months.
