Larry Ellison overtakes Elon Musk as world’s richest person

10 September 2025 , 21:11

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Larry Ellison overtakes Elon Musk as world’s richest person

The US tech billionaire Larry Ellison has surpassed Elon Musk as the world’s richest person after shares in Oracle, the business he co-founded, soared in early trading on Wednesday.

Ellison’s wealth has increased significantly after the company, in which he owns a 41% stake, reported better than expected financial results.

Oracle shares climbed by more than 40% in early trading to $340 a share, valuing the business software company at $958bn (£707bn) and Ellison’s stake at $393bn, just ahead of Musk’s fortune of $384bn, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index.

The surge in shares is the company’s largest single-day increase ever and the biggest one-day wealth increase on the Bloomberg index. The two are 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, who has been an antagonist to various figures in the business and political realms, has a close relationship with Ellison – who is often described as a mentor to the South Africa-born tech entrepreneur.

Ellison was on the board of Tesla between 2018 and 2022 and invested $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 contribute 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.

James Smith

Editor-in-Chief