The world briefly got a new richest man: Oracle’s Larry Elisson overtook Elon Musk, but only for hours

Tesla CEO Elon Musk briefly lost his title as the world’s richest man to the Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Ellison’s wealth surged to $393bn on Wednesday morning, surpassing Musk’s $385bn. The jump came after shares of Oracle, which make up a significant part of Ellison’s fortune, soared more than 40 per cent.

The boost was due to the database software company’s surprisingly rosy outlook for its cloud infrastructure business and artificial intelligence (AI) deals. However, by the end of the day, the firm’s share price had shed some of those gains, putting Musk back on top.

It is pertinent to note that before losing his title to Ellison, Musk had been the world’s richest person for nearly two years. Apart from this, he could receive a pay package worth over $1 trillion from Tesla if he hits a list of ambitious targets over the next decade. However, the shares in Musk’s most valuable business, Tesla, have fallen this year.

The electric vehicle has been facing investor jitters over the US President Donald Trump administration’s rollback of electric vehicle initiatives, on top of consumer backlash to Musk’s political involvement.

Did Trump’s ties help Ellison?

Meanwhile, Oracle has reported a major surge in demand among AI companies for its data centres. Recently, it signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with customers in the last quarter and anticipates several more deals in the months ahead, chief executive Safra Catz said on Tuesday.

The 81-year-old billionaire started Oracle in 1977, and his company rose to prominence in the 1990s when he became a public figure known as much for his lavish lifestyle as for the database company behind his fortune. Ellison served as the CEO of the company until 2014 and is now the company’s chairman and chief technology officer.

Over the years, he has positioned himself as an ally of Trump. When the Republican firebrand returned to the White House in January, Ellison appeared alongside OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to announce a project called Stargate to build out AI infrastructure in the US.

Interestingly, Oracle has also emerged as a possible buyer of TikTok, the app owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance. TikTok is facing a ban in the US unless the social media platform divests itself of its ByteDance ownership.

When asked whether he was open to Musk buying TikTok, Trump responded: “I’d like Larry to buy it, too.” However, Ellison’s media ambitions extend beyond TikTok. He funded the bulk of an $8 bn bid by his son to acquire Paramount, which owns CBS and MTV. The deal, between Paramount and the media company Skydance, which is controlled by Ellison’s son David, was closed last month.