Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison briefly became the world’s richest person on Wednesday, surpassing Elon Musk after a sharp rally in Oracle’s share price.
Ellison’s fortune climbed to $393 billion (£290 billion) in morning trading, edging past Musk’s $385 billion (£284 billion), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The jump followed a more than 40% surge in Oracle shares, driven by a bullish outlook for the company’s cloud infrastructure operations and a series of artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships.
However, by the end of the trading day, Oracle’s stock had given up some of those gains, returning Musk — the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive — to the top of the global rich list. Musk had held the number-one spot for nearly a year before the brief shakeup.
Musk’s wealth remains tied to the performance of Tesla, whose shares have fallen this year amid investor concerns over the Trump administration’s rollback of electric vehicle incentives and growing consumer backlash to Musk’s political positions. Nonetheless, the electric car maker’s board has proposed a pay package that could see Musk receive over $1 trillion (£740 billion) if he meets a series of long-term performance goals over the next decade.
Oracle, meanwhile, has been buoyed by a wave of demand for data centre infrastructure. In its latest quarterly earnings report on Tuesday, the company forecast a 77% jump in annual cloud revenue to $18 billion, with growth expected to continue in coming years. Chief executive Safra Catz said Oracle had signed four multibillion-dollar contracts last quarter and anticipated more deals soon.
Ellison, 81, co-founded Oracle in 1977 and served as chief executive until 2014, remaining as chairman and chief technology officer. Known for his extravagant lifestyle, he has become a close ally of US President Donald Trump.
When Trump returned to the White House in January, Ellison joined OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to unveil “Stargate,” a project aimed at expanding AI infrastructure in the United States.
Oracle has also been floated as a potential buyer of TikTok, the video-sharing platform owned by China’s ByteDance, which faces a US ban unless it divests its Chinese ownership. Earlier this year, Trump remarked, “I’d like Larry to buy it, too,” when asked about the possibility of Musk acquiring TikTok.
Ellison’s ambitions in the media industry go beyond TikTok. He helped finance an $8 billion takeover bid by his son David’s company Skydance to acquire Paramount Global, the owner of CBS and MTV. The deal was finalised last month.
Source: BBC
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