Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison has dethroned Elon Musk as the world’s richest person, after an extraordinary surge in Oracle’s stock lifted his net worth to $393 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Ellison’s fortune jumped by $101 billion in a single day—the largest one-day increase ever recorded—propelled by Oracle’s stunning quarterly earnings and soaring demand for data center capacity from artificial intelligence customers. Oracle shares were up nearly 40% by late Wednesday morning in New York trading.
Oracle’s CEO, Safra Catz, revealed Tuesday that the company had signed four multibillion-dollar contracts during the quarter and expects several more in the months ahead. In July, Oracle struck a major deal with OpenAI to supply 4.5 gigawatts of electricity to run its AI software, further cementing its role as a backbone for the global AI boom.
Ellison, Oracle’s largest individual shareholder, now holds the crown previously dominated by Musk, whose fortune stands at $385 billion, tied largely to Tesla and SpaceX. Musk had maintained the title since 2021, though he briefly ceded it to Bernard Arnault in 2021 and Jeff Bezos in 2024.
Oracle’s market capitalization now hovers just under $700 billion, making its stock surge exceedingly rare for a company of its size. The company has ridden the same AI wave that elevated Nvidia to become the world’s most valuable firm at over $4 trillion, with Microsoft also crossing the threshold earlier this year.
So far in 2025, Oracle’s stock has risen 103%, underscoring Ellison’s dramatic leap into the top spot among global billionaires.
