Elon Musk has lost his long-held title as the world’s richest person, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, after Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison surged past him on the strength of a historic rally in Oracle’s stock price.
Ellison’s fortune jumped by more than $100 billion in a single day after the company announced record-breaking earnings and revealed massive contracts in the booming artificial intelligence sector, including a landmark $300 billion deal with OpenAI. That leap pushed his estimated net worth to around $393 billion, surpassing Musk’s wealth, which Bloomberg now places near $385 billion. The shift marks the largest one-day gain ever recorded in the index, cementing Ellison’s position at the top of the global wealth rankings.
For Musk, the dethroning reflects the volatility of his assets. Much of his fortune is tied to Tesla’s stock, which has been sliding in recent months amid softening sales, heightened competition, and ongoing political controversies surrounding his public persona. While SpaceX and his social media platform X remain valuable, their private valuations make Musk’s true net worth harder to pin down. In fact, Forbes continues to list him as the world’s wealthiest individual, with an estimate above $430 billion, underscoring the ongoing debate over how billionaire wealth is calculated.
Ellison’s rise, at the age of 81, highlights both his longevity in Silicon Valley and Oracle’s dramatic transformation from a legacy software company into a key player in the global race for AI computing power. Once known primarily for databases, Oracle is now securing its place as an indispensable infrastructure provider for the next generation of technology.
The reshuffling at the top of the billionaire rankings comes at a time of enormous upheaval in tech markets. AI has become the engine of staggering fortunes almost overnight, while even giants like Tesla are proving vulnerable to shifts in consumer demand and investor sentiment. For Musk, losing the crown is unlikely to diminish his global influence, but it underscores the precarious nature of wealth tied so closely to the stock market. For Ellison, it is a late-career triumph that confirms his reputation as one of the industry’s most enduring power players.
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