Oracle cofounder, Larry Ellison, briefly became the world’s richest person on Wednesday, overtaking Elon Musk for several hours after a historic rally in Oracle’s stock price propelled his fortune to new heights.
According to Bloomberg, Ellison’s net worth surged by $89 billion to $383.2 billion following Oracle’s impressive quarterly earnings report released Tuesday evening.
The company’s stock soared on the back of massive demand for data center infrastructure from artificial intelligence firms.
At its peak, shares jumped 43% before closing with a 36% gain—Oracle’s largest single-day increase since 1992.
This surge temporarily placed Ellison, Oracle’s largest individual shareholder, ahead of Musk on the global wealth rankings. However, by the end of the trading session, Musk reclaimed the top spot with a net worth of $384.2 billion, just $1 billion ahead of Ellison.
Oracle CEO Safra Catz disclosed that the company signed four multibillion-dollar deals in the last quarter, with expectations of more to come. She credited the spike in demand for Oracle’s cloud infrastructure services from AI-focused clients as the company’s driving force.
In July, Oracle also announced a major agreement to supply OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, with 4.5 gigawatts of electricity to support its AI operations.
“We’ll be talking about this one for a long time,” said Ben Reitzes, an analyst at Melius Research, who described Oracle’s $455 billion backlog in AI service demand as “staggering.”
The rally also marked a historic moment for Oracle’s valuation. The company’s market capitalization swelled by $244 billion, reaching $922 billion and pushing it into the top 10 companies on the S&P 500. Oracle surpassed major players including Eli Lilly, Walmart, and JPMorgan Chase in market value.
Bloomberg described Ellison’s personal gain as the largest single-day increase ever recorded on its billionaire index, noting that his wealth had at one point risen as much as $101 billion before settling.
With this latest boost, Oracle joins the ranks of AI-driven market leaders such as Microsoft and Nvidia. “Microsoft and Oracle really aren’t software companies anymore — they are AI cloud infrastructure stocks that happen to sell software too,” Reitzes observed.
Shares of Oracle have climbed 97% so far in 2025, prompting analysts at Citi and Bank of America to upgrade their ratings on the stock to “buy.” Meanwhile, Tesla shares have dropped 14% this year, contributing to fluctuations in Musk’s net worth.
Musk, who first reached the top of the global rich list in 2021, has occasionally been overtaken by other billionaires including LVMH’s Bernard Arnault and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Nonetheless, he has consistently reclaimed the lead, buoyed by his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, along with a compensation package valued at nearly $1 trillion if certain performance targets are met.
Ellison, now 81, co-founded Oracle in 1977 after leaving college. In addition to his business empire, he owns nearly the entire Hawaiian island of Lana’i and has transformed the Indian Wells tennis tournament into a top-tier event often called the “fifth slam.”
A known ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Ellison has appeared at White House tech summits and has been associated with past efforts to broker deals involving social media giant TikTok.
