For decades, the contest for the world’s richest person has been a revolving door between technology titans. Yet this week marks a historic turning point: Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, has overtaken Elon Musk to become the world’s wealthiest individual with a net worth of $393 billion. Musk now trails at $385 billion.
This tectonic shift is not merely about personal fortunes; it reflects a deeper economic transformation underway. The driver is artificial intelligence (AI) — not as an abstract promise, but as a concrete demand for computing infrastructure, cloud contracts, and hyperscale data centers.
A $101 Billion Gain in a Single Day
Ellison’s wealth surged by an unprecedented $101 billion in a single trading session, the largest single-day gain in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This followed Oracle’s revelation of $455 billion in remaining performance obligations, a staggering 359% increase year-over-year. Wall Street had expected less than half that figure.
The contracts underpinning this growth are monumental. Oracle has inked multibillion-dollar deals with OpenAI, xAI, Meta, and Nvidia — positioning the company at the heart of the global AI revolution.
Oracle’s Stock Enters the Trillion-Dollar Club’s Orbit
Oracle’s stock spiked more than 40% in a day, pushing its market capitalization close to $950 billion, surpassing JPMorgan Chase and bringing it within striking distance of the coveted trillion-dollar threshold. For a company once seen as a “legacy database firm,” this represents a radical reinvention.
Safra Catz, Oracle’s CEO, projects Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) revenues will grow from $18 billion today to $144 billion by 2030. This scale of growth rivals the trajectories that once propelled Amazon, Microsoft, and Google into the trillion-dollar stratosphere.
The $300 Billion OpenAI Deal — A New Era in Cloud
The centerpiece of Oracle’s ascent is its record-breaking $300 billion contract with OpenAI for cloud compute capacity. This deal alone requires 4.5 gigawatts of energy — enough to power 4 million households — and involves deploying up to 400,000 Nvidia GB200 AI chips in Oracle’s Abilene, Texas “Supercluster.”
This agreement is central to OpenAI’s Project Stargate, a half-trillion-dollar initiative to build 10 gigawatts of AI infrastructure in the United States. With this partnership, Oracle joins Amazon, Microsoft, and Google at the summit of global AI cloud providers — but with momentum on its side.
Who Is Larry Ellison?
Lawrence Joseph Ellison, born on August 17, 1944, in New York City, is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. At 81 years old, Ellison has become the richest man alive.
He co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977, transforming it from a database startup into one of the world’s largest enterprise software and cloud computing companies. Ellison owns about 41% of Oracle, which is the primary driver of his immense wealth.
Beyond Oracle, Ellison is known for his lavish lifestyle, real estate holdings in California and Hawaii, and his passion for sailing — his team, Oracle Team USA, won the America’s Cup twice.
Ellison has been married four times and has two children: David Ellison, a film producer, and Megan Ellison, a film financier known for backing award-winning movies. Despite his immense fortune, Ellison has pledged much of his wealth to philanthropy through initiatives like the Ellison Medical Foundation, which funds research on aging and global health.
Why Ellison Matters in the AI Economy
At 81, Larry Ellison has become the unlikely face of the AI-driven wealth boom. While Musk’s Tesla faces market headwinds, Ellison’s Oracle has captured the investor imagination as the infrastructure backbone of AI. The comparison is telling: Tesla shares are down 13% this year, while Oracle’s stock has added $300 billion in value in one day.
As an economist and AI specialist, one sees in Ellison’s rise not just a personal triumph, but a signal of a structural shift in global capital flows. Capital is now gravitating toward those who enable intelligence at scale — the chips, clouds, and contracts that make AI possible.
What This Means for the Future
Ellison’s new status as the world’s richest man underscores the start of an AI infrastructure super-cycle. Trillions will be invested in data centers, chips, and cloud networks over the next decade. Oracle’s staggering growth projections show that the future wealth of nations and corporations will hinge less on producing consumer apps and more on controlling the supply chain of intelligence itself.
History will remember this moment as the point when AI demand reshaped the hierarchy of global wealth. Larry Ellison’s rise is not just the story of one man — it is the story of an economic order being rewritten in real time.
References
- Oracle Corporation. Oracle Announces Fiscal Year 2026 First Quarter Financial Results. Oracle Investor Relations, September 9, 2025. https://investor.oracle.com.
- “Oracle Expects Half a Trillion Dollars in Booked Cloud Orders, Stock Rises 27%.” Reuters, September 9, 2025. https://www.reuters.com.
- “Larry Ellison Surpasses Elon Musk as World’s Richest Person Amid AI Cloud Surge.” The Washington Post, September 10, 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com.
- “Larry Ellison, Oracle’s Co-Founder, Overtakes Elon Musk as World’s Richest Person.” People Magazine, September 10, 2025. https://people.com.
- “Oracle Stock Soars on Record AI Cloud Demand.” Investor’s Business Daily, September 9, 2025. https://www.investors.com.