Larry Ellison overtakes Elon Musk to become world's richest person

Oracle co-founder Ellison's current total net worth stands at $393 billion, surpassing Tesla chief Elon Musk, whose fortune totals around $385 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index

The world has a new richest person: Larry Ellison, Oracle's co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO). His fortune surged by $101 billion in New York on Wednesday (local time) after the company announced its quarterly results that surpassed expectations, reported Bloomberg.

 

The Oracle stock surged as much as 43 per cent on the back of a demand surge for its cloud services from artificial intelligence (AI) firms, bringing its market valuation to $969 billion. According to Bloomberg, this is the sharpest jump in the company's share since 1992.

 

The jump also boosted Ellison's net worth to $393 billion, nudging Tesla chief Elon Musk, whose fortune totals around $385 billion, into second place, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

 

Musk first became the world’s richest person in 2021, though he briefly lost the position to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault, before reclaiming the title last year.  Since then, he had held it for just over 300 days before Ellison overtook him on Wednesday. 

Who is Larry Ellison?

Ellison, 81, is the co-founder, chairman and CTO of Oracle and holds a roughly 40 per cent stake in the company. After leading Oracle as CEO for 37 years, he stepped down from that role in 2014. His wealth climbed as Oracle expanded — largely through a steady string of software company acquisitions.

 

Interestingly, Ellison was an early Musk ally: he served on Tesla’s board from 2018 to 2022 and left with about 45 million split-adjusted Tesla shares. Forbes also reports that he owns nearly half of the media outfit Paramount Skydance. However, the bulk of his net worth is tied to Oracle.

 

Oracle’s cloud growth fuels momentum

Oracle’s cloud infrastructure revenue surged 55 per cent to $3.3 billion, topping analysts’ forecast of 53 per cent growth, Bloomberg reported. Earlier this year, the company struck an agreement with OpenAI, securing 4.5 gigawatts of data centre capacity. Nvidia and TikTok parent ByteDance are also among its key cloud clients.

 

“There’s no better proof of a seismic shift in computing than the results we’ve just delivered,” CEO Safra Catz said on Tuesday.