Oracle’s latest earnings have done more than excite Wall Street; they have catapulted its co-founder, Larry Ellison, to the top of the global wealth rankings.
Ellison, 81, overtook Tesla boss Elon Musk on Wednesday to become the world’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His fortune surged by an unprecedented $101 billion in a single day, following Oracle’s blockbuster quarterly results that signalled robust growth in its cloud business. The rally pushed his net worth to $393 billion, edging past Musk’s $385 billion.
The rise marks the largest one-day wealth gain ever recorded on Bloomberg’s index, underscoring how central cloud computing has become to the fortunes of today’s tech elite.
Oracle’s stock, already up 45 per cent this year, soared another 41 per cent on the back of strong bookings and an upbeat forecast for its cloud infrastructure unit.
Ellison, who still holds the bulk of his fortune in Oracle shares, remains the company’s chairman and chief technology officer.
His decades-long bet on enterprise software is now paying off in dramatic fashion, positioning Oracle as a key challenger in the cloud race against Amazon and Microsoft.
For Musk, the dethroning is familiar territory. Since first claiming the crown in 2021, the Tesla CEO has traded places with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault before regaining the top spot last year.
His nearly year-long run has now ended as Tesla’s shares, down 13 per cent this year, continue to weigh on his fortune.
Still, Musk’s future prospects are far from bleak. Tesla’s board has proposed a mammoth pay package that, if approved and met, could eventually make him the world’s first trillionaire.
For now, however, Ellison sits atop the global wealth leaderboard, a reminder that the shifting tides of technology and markets can redraw the billionaire hierarchy almost overnight.