Oracle’s Larry Ellison briefly overtook Elon Musk as the world’s richest person after a record-breaking stock surge driven by artificial intelligence, but Musk reclaimed the crown by day’s end, proving how quickly fortunes shift in tech’s billion-dollar arena.
Elon Musk briefly lost his position as the world’s richest person to Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, after Ellison’s net worth soared in one of the biggest single-day gains in financial history.
According to Bloomberg, Ellison’s wealth jumped by $89 billion on Wednesday to reach $383.2 billion. The spike came after Oracle (ORCL) posted a stunning earnings report on Tuesday evening, revealing surging demand for its cloud services and data center capacity from artificial intelligence companies. The report sent Oracle’s stock skyrocketing, gaining as much as 43 percent before closing higher by about 36 percent, the company’s strongest single-day rise since 1992.
Ellison, Oracle’s largest individual shareholder, briefly surpassed Musk in net worth. However, by the market’s close on Wednesday, Musk had edged back into the top spot with an estimated fortune of $384.2 billion, $1 billion ahead of Ellison.
The dramatic stock jump reflected Oracle’s emergence as a key provider of cloud infrastructure powering AI companies’ vast computing needs. Oracle CEO Safra Catz confirmed that the company had signed four multibillion-dollar contracts in the quarter and expected to sign several more soon. In July, Oracle announced an agreement to supply OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, with 4.5 gigawatts of electricity to run its software.
“We’ll be talking about this one for a long time,” wrote Ben Reitzes, an analyst at Melius Research, who described Oracle’s $455 billion backlog in AI service demand as “staggering.”
Ellison’s leap in wealth, which at one point reached $101 billion before settling at $89 billion, was recorded as the “biggest one-day increase ever” in Bloomberg’s billionaire index. Oracle’s market value soared by about $244 billion, climbing to nearly $922 billion, and elevating the company to the tenth-most valuable firm in the S&P 500. It surpassed long-established giants including Eli Lilly, Walmart, and JPMorgan Chase.
Oracle’s historic rise places it alongside the tech leaders driving the AI boom. Nvidia, valued at over $4 trillion, currently tops the list of the world’s most valuable companies. Microsoft briefly joined Nvidia above the $4 trillion mark, while other tech stocks dominate the top positions in the S&P 500. Analysts argue that “Microsoft and Oracle really aren’t software companies anymore, they are AI cloud infrastructure stocks that happen to sell software too.”
Oracle’s stock has risen 97 percent so far this year. Both Bank of America and Citi raised their price targets on Wednesday, upgrading Oracle from “neutral” to “buy.”
In contrast, Tesla shares (TSLA) have declined about 14 percent this year, trimming Musk’s fortune, but not enough to dethrone him for long. Musk has held the title of world’s richest person since 2021, though he has briefly lost it twice before, first to LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and later to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Despite these fluctuations, Musk has maintained his position through his stakes in Tesla, SpaceX, and other ventures. He was recently awarded a new pay package that could be worth close to $1 trillion if Tesla hits performance milestones.
Ellison, aged 81, built his fortune after co-founding Oracle in 1977 following his departure from college. Beyond Oracle, he owns 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lana’i, has revived the Indian Wells tennis tournament in California, and has been a fixture in political and business circles. He has close ties with former U.S. President Donald Trump and was once seen as a potential buyer of TikTok, though that acquisition never materialized.
Ellison’s one-day surge underscores how artificial intelligence is reshaping global wealth rankings and fueling unprecedented stock market gains. Oracle’s position as a central player in AI infrastructure has pushed it into new financial territory and momentarily allowed its cofounder to surpass Musk.
Yet, as the market closed, Musk reclaimed the top position with $384.2 billion, a reminder of the volatility at the very peak of the billionaire index. For both men, the contest reflects not just personal fortunes but also the wider race among tech companies to dominate the AI-powered future.
