NEW YORK (AP) — Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday, according to wealth tracker Bloomberg, as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading.
A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who became the world’s richest for the first time four years ago. Stock in one of Musk’s biggest holdings, Tesla, has been moving in the opposite direction of Oracle’s, dropping 14% so far this year as of Tuesday.
The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle powered by multibillion dollar orders from customers as the artificial-intelligence race heats up.
Another news organization with a long history of tallying the world’s richest, Forbes, still has Musk at the top, at $439 billion. Bloomberg put his net worth at $385 billion. The difference is partly in how the two estimate the value of Musk’s private holdings, which include rocket maker SpaceX and the former Twitter, now called X.
With Ellison’s surging fortune Wednesday, he could fund the lifestyles of 5 million American families for a year, about the entire population of Florida, allowing them to all quit their jobs, assuming the U.S. median household income.
Or Ellison could just tell all of South Africa to take a vacation for year and produce nothing, based on its gross domestic product.
Ellison owns about 40% of Oracle, which means its surging stock added $100 billion to his net worth in little over a half-hour after stock market opened. The company had announced more than $300 billion worth of new contracts when it reported earnings. It said that it now expects revenue from its cloud infrastructure business to jump 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year. then rise to $144 billion in four years after that.
Ellison said about the bold projections, “AI Changes Everything.”
Musk is hoping the same for Tesla and his own net worth, but he’s been struggling to convince investors.
The company had been promising a big turnaround in electric car sales after they fell sharply earlier this year, but the bounce back hasn’t happened. Musk has been downplaying the bad numbers by trying to shift investors’ focus to Tesla’s other business of making robots and advances in the artificial intelligence behind its cars and robotaxis.
While he keeps talking up the Tesla future, though, the bad news keeps coming.
Tesla sales in the European Union plunged 40% earlier this summer, the seventh month in row of drops, as customers balked at buying his cars after he took to X to support extreme right-wing politicians there. The company has been losing market share in the U.S., too, as buyers angry with his embrace of Donald Trump have stayed away from Tesla showrooms.
