US tech billionaire Larry Ellison is neck-and-neck with Elon Musk in the contest to be the world’s richest person after briefly overtaking the Tesla chief executive on Wednesday
Ellison’s wealth surged after Oracle, the business software company in which he owns a stake of 41%, reported better than expected financial results.
Oracle shares rose by more than 40% in early trading, at one point valuing the business software company at approximately $960bn (£707bn) and Ellison’s stake at $393bn, just ahead of Musk’s fortune of $384bn, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index. However, Ellison’s lead was short-lived as the stock closed at $328, a rise of 36% valuing Ellison’s shareholding at $378bn and putting Musk back ahead.
The pair sit comfortably ahead of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
Ellison, 81, also has other sources of wealth, including a stake in electric carmaker Tesla, where Musk is chief executive, a sailing team, the Indian Wells Open tennis tournament, and an island in Hawaii, according to Bloomberg.
Musk, an antagonist to various figures in the worlds of business and politics, has a close relationship with Ellison – who is often described as a mentor to the South Africa-born tech entrepreneur.
Ellison sat on the board of Tesla between 2018 and 2022 and put $1bn into Musk’s purchase of Twitter – since rebranded as X. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, when the Tesla CEO asked Ellison to invest in Twitter, Ellison said he would put in a billion dollars or “whatever you recommend”. Musk is a frequent visitor to Ellison’s Hawaiian island, Lanai, according to the book.
Ellison is also a supporter of Donald Trump and has regularly appeared alongside the US president at the White House, including the launch of the Stargate project to invest $500bn in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US. Musk, a prominent backer of Trump’s 2024 election campaign, also had a strong relationship with Trump before it imploded earlier this year.
Oracle accounts for the majority of Ellison’s wealth and its value has been boosted by demand from AI companies for its cloud services, which provide computing capacity for firms such as ChatGPT developer OpenAI, who need vast datacentres to power their technology.
Musk, the chief executive of Tesla who also owns the SpaceX rocket company, became the world’s richest person for the first time in 2021, according to Bloomberg, before relinquishing it to Bezos and French luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault.
He regained it last year but is now being challenged by Ellison just over 300 days later.
