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Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle and an ally of US President Donald Trump, briefly surpassed Elon Musk as the world’s richest man. On Wednesday morning, Ellison’s net worth reached $393 billion (£290 billion), overtaking Musk’s $385 billion (£284 billion), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This shift was prompted by a more than 40% surge in Oracle’s shares, sparked by the company’s upbeat forecast for its cloud infrastructure business and AI partnerships.
But the firm's share price had shed some of those gains by the end of the day, putting Musk back on top.
Before briefly losing it to Ellison, Musk had held the title of world's richest person for nearly one year. He could receive a pay package worth over $1tn (£740bn) if he hits a list of ambitious targets over the next decade, the board of the electric car firm has proposed. But shares in Musk's most valuable business, Tesla, have fallen this year.
The electric vehicle maker has grappled with investor jitters over the Trump administration's rollback of electric vehicle initiatives, on top of consumer backlash to Musk's political involvement.
Oracle has recently been propelled by growing demand for data centre infrastructure. The company projected as part of its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday that revenue from its cloud business will jump 77% this year, to $18bn, with further growth expected in the coming years.
Oracle has reported a surge in demand among AI companies for its data centres, which helped push its stock dramatically higher.
Ellison, 81, helped start Oracle in 1977 and rose to prominence in the 1990s, when he became a public figure known as much for his lavish lifestyle as for the database company behind his fortune.
He was Oracle's chief executive until 2014 and is now the company's chairman and chief technology officer. And he has positioned himself as an ally to President Trump.
