Elon Musk has lost his crown of “world’s richest person” to Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison. Ellison’s wealth increased by $101 billion as of 10:10 am in New York after Oracle Corp. reported quarterly results that exceeded expectations, Bloomberg noted.
The fortune of Ellison, a college dropout, is now $393 billion, greater than Musk’s $385 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Musk became the world’s richest person for the first time in 2021. He lost the crown to Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault before taking it back last year, per Bloomberg.
Ellison, 81, who was raised in a working-class Jewish immigrant household in Chicago, co-founded Oracle in 1977 and currently serves as chairman and chief technology officer. Most of his fortune comes from his database software company, whose value has gone up thanks to demand from AI startups for its cloud services.
Oracle’s shares soared 41% Wednesday after the company “posted a major increase in bookings and gave an aggressive outlook for its cloud infrastructure business. It’s the company’s largest single-day surge ever,” Bloomberg wrote.
The company signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with customers in the last quarter and expects several more deals in the coming months, chief executive Safra Catz said on Tuesday.
Shares of Tesla Inc. are, however, down 13% this year. As of Wednesday, Forbes, which also ranks the world’s wealthiest individuals, still has Musk as the world’s richest, with his fortune at $439 billion.
Musk could receive a pay package worth over $1 trillion if he meets some ambitious targets over the next 10 years.
