Elon Musk has lost his “world’s richest person” title to Oracle cofounder, Larry Ellison.
Ellison has close ties with President Donald Trump, often appearing with him at the White House for various technology events and rewarding Oracle contracts.
According to Bloomberg, his wealth jumped by $101 billion to $393 billion after Oracle’s stunningly strong earnings report Tuesday evening, surpassing Musk’s net worth of $385 billion.
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Oracle reported surging demand for its data center capacity from AI customers, launching the stock into the stratosphere and its shares gained 36% on Wednesday, which was the stock’s biggest single-day gain since 1992.
CEO Safra Catz announced Tuesday after the stock market closed that Oracle signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with customers during the quarter, and she expects to sign several more in the coming months.
“We’ll be talking about this one for a long time,” said Ben Reitzes, analyst at Melius Research, about Oracle’s earnings report in a note to investors Wednesday.
Reitzes called Oracle’s $455 billion backlog in demand for its AI services “staggering.”
Ellison is Oracle’s largest individual shareholder and captured the title of world’s richest person because of the stock’s extraordinary gains on Wednesday. The stock’s jump is exceedingly rare for a company that has a massive market value.
In July, Oracle announced a deal to provide ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI with 4.5 gigawatts of electricity to power its AI software.
The stock’s jump is exceedingly rare for a company that has a massive market value of just under $700 billion – the 13th most-valuable stock on the market at Tuesday’s close.
Oracle is now on the cusp of surpassing $1 trillion in market value.
Nevertheless, Musk has prevailed despite his various trials and tribulations. He was even give a new pay package that could be worth close to $1 trillion once Tesla hits certain milestones.
For Ellison, his road to becoming the world’s richest person traces back to 1977, when he dropped out of college and helped establish Oracle.
The 81-year-old multibillionaire owns 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lana’i and is credited for reviving the Indian Wells tennis tournament in California, earning it the “fifth slam” nickname.
He’s also seen has a possible suitor for TikTok, although those plans have not come to fruition.