Musk’s title of richest person challenged by Oracle’s Ellison

Oracle shares surged more than 35% in early trading on September 10, 2025, after the software giant projected massive revenue growth based on contracts tied to artificial intelligence. The surge will significantly boost the wealth of Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, left, who could potentially surpass Elon Musk as the world's richest person. Photos / Toru Yamanaka and Allison Robbert, AFP

Billionaire Elon Musk is at risk of losing his title as the world’s wealthiest person to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, whose software giant is poised for massive AI riches.

Ellison, 81, amassed about US$100 billion ($168.2b) in additional wealth on Wednesday as Oracle shares skyrocketed after the nearly 50-year-old company forecast massive revenue growth amid the artificial intelligence investment boom.

That rise lifted Ellison’s overall fortune to about US$395b compared with Musk’s roughly US$440b, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires index.

A Bloomberg wealth index placed Ellison’s bounty slightly ahead of Musk’s, designating the Oracle chief No 1 at the moment. The difference in the tallies relates to how some of their huge holdings are estimated.

Ellison and Musk are close friends, with the Oracle boss often coming to Musk’s aid during challenging periods in the Tesla tycoon’s career.

He invested more than US$1b in Musk’s buyout of Twitter and served on Tesla’s board for many years.

Musk’s most easily estimated holding is Tesla, whose shares have fallen in 2025 amid languishing sales attributed partly to Musk’s embrace of far-right political figures.

Tesla this month unveiled a compensation proposal for Musk that could top US$1 trillion through 2035 if the company hits ambitious targets. Shareholders will vote on the plan in November.

Ellison, a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, holds more than 1.1 billion shares of Oracle, accounting for more than 40% of equity, according to S&P Capital IQ.

Oracle CEO Safra Catz called the just-finished quarter “astonishing” as the company signed “four multi-billion-dollar contracts with three different customers”.

Oracle projected that its cloud business revenues would grow 77% in the current fiscal year to US$18b. In subsequent years, revenues are expected to rise to US$32b, US$73b, US$114b, and US$144b.

AI growth

Oracle has sealed deals with OpenAI and other leading AI companies to build large data centres to train their AI models.

On a conference call Tuesday, Ellison described the company as well positioned to be a dominant force in “AI inferencing”, where the technology will lead to a more profound level of automation affecting everything from assessing medical lab results to placing bets in financial markets.

“AI is going to automatically write the computer programs that will then automate your sales processes and your legal processes and everything else in your factories and so on,” said Ellison, who emphasised the appeal of adopting the new AI capabilities to Oracle’s legacy business around secure management of proprietary company data.

Ellison built his fortune through Oracle, which he founded in 1977 as a data server provider for the CIA, among others.

Early on, the company competed with Microsoft, IBM, and Sun Microsystems to provide the data infrastructure for the emerging digital economy.

Ellison, who publicly sparred in earlier years with Bill Gates and other technology leaders, has also been known for heavy investments in professional sailing, with his Oracle team winning the America’s Cup in 2010 and 2013.

In 2009, Ellison became the owner of the Indian Wells Tennis Garden and BNP Paribas Open, near Palm Springs, California, which is sometimes referred to as tennis’ unofficial “fifth Grand Slam”.

Near 6.30pm GMT, Oracle shares were up around 36% at US$328.58, translating into a market value of around US$920b.

- Agence France-Presse