Thursday, September 11, 2025 - US tech billionaire Larry Ellison has overtaken Elon Musk as the world’s richest person.
Ellison’s wealth surged after shares in the company, Oracle,
which he co-founded and in which he owns a stake of 41%, rocketed in early
trading on Wednesday, September 10.
Oracle shares rose 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 jump in the shares is the company’s largest single-day
increase ever and the biggest ever one-day wealth increase on the Bloomberg
index.
Ellison 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 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, just over 300 days later, he
was dislodged again by 81-year-old Ellison.
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