Elon Musk briefly loses ‘world’s richest person' crown to Larry Ellison

nikola tesla CEO Elon Musk briefly missed his 'world's richest person' rubric to Oracle Corp.'s Larry ralph ellison on midweek. However, he was quick to regain the crown by the end of the day.

The heated battle among the billionaires shot up as stock in Ellison's Oracle Corp. Surged more than a third within a few stunning minutes after markets opened. The skyrocketing was enough for him to temporarily wrestle the title from Elon Musk, The Associated Press reported.

But the uncertainty of the stock market played to Musk's benefit, who was back on top by the end of the day, as Oracle reportedly gave up some parts of its earlier gains.

The difference between Musk and Ellison in being the world's richest person is one billion dollars. Elon Musk's current worth is $384.2 billion, against Ellison's $383.2 billion.

Both Musk's and Ellison's fortunes are so massive that they can each fund the lifestyles of five million typical American families for one year. They could also tell the entire South Africa to take a year-long vacation and produce nothing, based on its gross domestic product.

Oracle Corp.'s stock skyrocketed after the release of the company's blockbuster earnings report, powered by customers' multibillion-dollar orders as the artificial-intelligence race continues to intensify.

Elon Musk became the world's richest person for the first time four years ago, a big reason for which was his stake in electric vehicle maker Tesla.

However, this stock has been moving in the opposite direction to Oracle's, dropping 14 per cent so far this year. Besides Tesla, Musk also owns and controls SpaceX, xAI, and the microblogging platform X, previously known as Twitter.

Meanwhile, Ellison owns around 40 per cent of Oracle, which means its increasing stock added $100 billion to his net worth in a little more than half an hour's time after the stock market opened on Wednesday.

After markets closed the previous day, Oracle released an earnings report and announced that it had struck new deals worth more than $300 billion, including contracts with OpenAI, Meta, Nvidia and Musk's xAI.

The company is hopeful that its revenue from its cloud infrastructure business will surge 77 per cent to $18 billion this fiscal, and then hit $144 billion mark in four years after that.

In an earnings call, Larry Ellison said that Oracle would not just be making money from its computing centres, but from the day-to-day running of the AI systems to operate robots in factories, design drugs in laboratories, place bets in financial markets and automate legal and sales work at companies.

The surge in Ellison's wealth was a hint at investor expectations that computers would take over humans' jobs, becoming a reality. And Oracle will benefit from this, or as the 81-year-old said, "AI changes everything".

While Musk has been hoping the same for Tesla and his total net worth, the billionaire has been struggling to persuade investors.

Tesla is yet to bounce back and make a big turnaround in electric car sales after they sharply fell earlier this year. Elon Musk has been trying to downplay the bad figures by trying to shift investors' focus to Tesla's other businesses, including robot-making and AI in cars and robotaxis.

Earlier this summer, Tesla's sales in the European Union also fell 40 per cent, taking a dip for the seventh consecutive month. His company's market share has also been falling in the US due to his backing of Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, Oracle's stock closed at $328.33, indicating a 36 per cent jump, while Tesla closed at $347.79, a less than 1 per cent jump.

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