Elon Musk briefly lost his position as the world’s richest person to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who is also a close ally of US President Donald Trump.
According to the Forbes billionaire list, Ellison’s net worth surged to $393 billion (£290bn) on Wednesday morning, surpassing Musk’s $385 billion (£284bn).
The sharp increase came after Oracle shares jumped more than 40%, driven by strong growth expectations in its cloud infrastructure business and new artificial intelligence (AI) contracts.
However, by the end of the trading day, Oracle’s stock retreated slightly, putting Musk back on top. Musk had held the world’s richest title for nearly a year before Ellison briefly overtook him.
Oracle projected that its cloud revenue would climb 77% this year to $18bn, with several multi-billion-dollar AI infrastructure contracts already signed and more in the pipeline, CEO Safra Catz said.
Meanwhile, Musk’s wealth has been dented by a decline in Tesla’s stock, amid investor concerns over the Trump administration’s rollback of electric vehicle policies and backlash to Musk’s political involvement.
Ellison, now 81 years old, co-founded Oracle in 1977 and served as its CEO until 2014. He remains chairman and chief technology officer. Known for his lavish lifestyle and high-profile business moves, he has increasingly positioned himself in the AI and media sectors.
Recently, Ellison joined forces with Trump, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to launch Stargate, an AI infrastructure project in the US.
Oracle has also been floated as a potential buyer of TikTok, which faces a US ban unless it separates from Chinese parent company ByteDance. Trump himself has said he would prefer Ellison to purchase TikTok over Musk.
Beyond tech, Ellison played a key role in funding his son David’s $8bn acquisition of Paramount’s parent company, Skydance, which finalized its deal with Paramount last month.
