In a stunning twist on September 10, 2025, Larry Ellison, co-founder and CTO of Oracle, briefly surpassed Elon Musk to claim the title of the world’s richest person. Ellison’s net worth shot up by approximately $101 billion in a single day fueled by Oracle’s explosive stock rally and reached $393 billion, nudging past Musk’s estimated $385 billion on financial rankings.
What Sparked the Surge
- Oracle shares surged about 41% in early trading, driven by exceptionally strong earnings and overwhelming demand for its AI infrastructure services.
- The company reported four major multi-billion-dollar contracts in its latest quarter and projected that revenue from its cloud and AI infrastructure business could hit $144 billion over the next four years.
- Ellison owns about 41% of Oracle, making his fortune highly sensitive to Oracle’s valuation. His $101 billion wealth gain set a record for the largest single-day increase ever recorded on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
A Short-Lived Crown?
Despite the dramatic rise, Ellison’s reign as the world’s richest was brief. Musk reclaimed the top spot later the same day after markets closed. Tesla’s share price and other variables played a role in that reversal.
Why It Matters for Tech & Wealth
- The event underscores the massive economic shifts enabled by the AI boom—especially among companies building the infrastructure that powers large-scale AI applications. Oracle’s cloud offerings, data-center capacity, and massive fulfilment of future contracted revenue are central to its resurgence.
- Also notable is how stock market dynamics can rapidly reshape global wealth rankings. With Elon Musk’s wealth largely tied to Tesla stock, volatile swings there can lead to equally swift changes in billionaire standings.
Larry Ellison’s brief rise to the top illustrates how infrastructure-centric tech companies are increasingly the powerhouses of global wealth creation and how in the age of AI, the biggest winners may not always be the flashiest innovators, but those enabling the core compute and data services behind them.
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