Larry Ellison pips Musk briefly as world's richest after Oracle stock zooms

Ellison's wealth shot up 30 per cent on Wednesday -- the biggest one-day increase ever recorded -- while he has seen a 99 per cent increase in his wealth so far this year

Larry Ellison, the chairman and co-founder of Oracle Corp, saw his wealth surge by over 30 per cent on Wednesday to briefly scale past Elon Musk as the world's richest person.

 

Shares of Oracle Corp soared as much as 43 per cent on Wednesday and closed 36 per cent higher at $328.33 per share, the steepest gains since 1992. The rally came after the company's quarterly earnings came in higher than analysts' expectations, along with massive artificial intelligence (AI) deals.

 

The stellar rally in the stock helped Ellison to briefly become the world's richest person with a current net worth of $383.2 billion, according to Bloomberg data. His wealth shot up 30 per cent on Wednesday -- the biggest one-day increase ever recorded -- while he has seen a 99 per cent increase in his wealth so far this year.

 

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Currently, Musk is the richest with a net worth of $384.2 billion, with Ellison trailing slightly by about $1 billion. Mark Zuckerberg takes the third place with $264.1 billion, followed by Amazon Inc. founder Jeff Bezos ($251.5 billion) and Alphabet's co-founder Larry Page ($209.8 billion).

 

Ellison, along with two partners, founded Oracle in 1977 and became public in March 1986, a day before Microsoft's initial public offering. Currently, he owns more than 40 per cent stake in the company, along with some stake in Musk-owned Tesla.

What triggered the Oracle stock rally?

The shares skyrocketed after better-than-expected quarterly earnings and a bullish outlook for its cloud business. The first quarter total revenue stood at $14.9 billion, up 12 per cent in $ and 11 per cent in constant currency. The cloud revenue was $7.2 billion, up 28 per cent in $ and 27 per cent in constant currency.

 

The rally was also driven after the company announced a $455 billion backlog for cloud services and multibillion-dollar computing contracts with major AI players Nvidia and ChatGPT maker OpenAI. That's more than four times higher than the same period a year earlier, Bloomberg reported.

 

"We signed four multi-billion-dollar contracts with three different customers in Q1," said Oracle Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz. "Over the next few months, we expect to sign up several additional multi-billion-dollar customers, and Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) is likely to exceed half a trillion dollars."

Tech/data services to be early AI adopters

As regards AI, analysts at Bernstein see almost all sectors will have use for this technology, but the heaviest early adopters will likely be firms in tech/data services where clear winners and losers will emerge, and asset management companies, which will utilise it across the chain from personalised portfolio construction to investment advice.

 

Private investment in the AI ecosystem was over $471 billion in the US from 2013-2024, the Bernstein note suggests. In China, it was $119 billion. India was less than a tenth of it at $11.29 billion. For scale, the investments in 2024 alone crossed $109 billion in the US, which also gives an idea about the pace at which investments are growing.

 

Tech now makes up nearly 30 per cent of the S&P 500, with Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft together representing over 15 per cent, notes Nigel Green, CEO of global financial advisory giant deVere Group, a global consulting firm that has nearly $12 billion in assets under management. Nvidia alone was responsible for more than a quarter of the index’s gains in 2024.

 

"The broader AI investment case remains intact. The demand for chips, data infrastructure, software, and electricity to power AI models continues to accelerate, with global data center energy use set to more than double by 2030," Green said.