- Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison beat out Tesla CEO Elon Musk to claim the title of world’s richest person for the first time Wednesday. The 81-year-old executive chairman has benefitted from Oracle’s growing cloud-infrastructure business; most notably this week, as the company announced it won several billion-dollar contracts in its most recent quarter.
The 81-year-old cofounder of software giant Oracle beat out Elon Musk to claim the title of world’s richest person for the first time.
Ellison, who cofounded Oracle in the ‘70s and is still its chief technology officer and executive chairman, saw his net worth skyrocket over the past day to $393 billion, jumping ahead of Musk’s $385 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.
Ellison’s wealth rose by $101 billion overnight after Oracle’s stock exploded by double digits after close Tuesday. On Wednesday, Oracle’s shares continued their upward trajectory, up more than 40% in morning trading. The company’s stock price has, as of Wednesday, doubled year-to-date. Ellison owns more than 40% of Oracle, and much of his wealth is tied to the company, according to Bloomberg.
Oracle has benefitted from large infrastructure investments in its role as a cloud provider and its services have been highly sought after by data-hoarding AI companies since the release of ChatGPT set off an arms race for advanced large language models (LLMs) in 2022.
The company said in its most recent quarter it won several contracts expected to yield $455 billion in revenue, a huge jump from the year prior, the Wall Street Journal reported. Before the end of the year, several more multibillion-dollar customers are expected to sign up with the company as well, said its CEO Safra Catz.
In recent months, Oracle’s recent stock gains lifted Ellison above Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who was previously the second-richest person behind Musk, before ultimately beating out Musk. Musk claimed the title of world’s richest for the first time in 2021 before being toppled by Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos and LVMH Bernard Arnault. Musk reclaimed the title in 2024 and held onto it for about 300 days, according to Bloomberg.
While Oracle’s stock is on the rise, Tesla’s shares are falling. The electric-car maker’s stock is down 13% year-to-date and its market share in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest point since 2017, Reuters reported citing data from research firm Cox Automotive.
But there may be hope for Musk, yet. Last week, Tesla’s board proposed a pay package that would make Musk the world’s first trillionaire—so long as he meets several lofty goals like increasing the company’s stock eightfold over the next 10 years.
