Larry Ellison's net worth swells by staggering $70bn in fierce battle with Elon Musk: Who is he?

Oracle stocks jumped more than 28% in premarket trading on Wednesday after the software giant said its AI-fueled cloud revenue is set to jump to $144 billion by its 2030 fiscal year. The company said it expects revenue in its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure business to grow 77% this year, from earlier projections of 70%, thanks to growing cloud demand and a host of new artificial intelligence deals.

Oracle also said it had signed four multi-billion-dollar contracts with three different customers in the first quarter, helping a 12% increase in revenue to $14.93 billion, reports news agency Reuters. “Over the next few months, we expect to sign-up several additional multi-billion-dollar customers and RPO is likely to exceed half-a-trillion dollars,” said CEO Safra Catz.

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Can Oracle CEO surpass Elon Musk?

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison inched closer to surpass Elon Musk as the world's richest man as the 81-year-old saw his net worth swell by a staggering $70 billion in just one day, after Oracle Corp. delivered an aggressive outlook for its cloud business that sent its shares skyrocketing.

According to Bloomberg, Ellison's fortune soared $101 billion as of 10:10 am. in New York after Oracle Corp. reported quarterly results that surpassed expectations and said there's more growth to come. Larry Ellison has become the world's richest person for the first time, surpassing Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

The increase lifted his total fortune to $393 billion, ahead of Musk who sits at $385 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It's the biggest one-day increase ever recorded by the index. Ellison's gain is the largest one-day increase ever recorded by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The dramatic increase came following Oracle's Q1 financial results, which saw a significant boost in stock price after extended trading hours.

Musk became the world’s richest person for the first time in 2021 before losing the title to Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault. He reclaimed it last year and has now held it for just over 300 days.

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The net worth surge of Ellison was fuelled by surge in Oracle stock- a whopping 26 percent- following the release of its Q1 2026 financial results. This was its biggest one-day gain since 1999.

The company's stock price surged as investors reacted positively to the company's aggressive outlook for its cloud infrastructure business. While the company's earnings per share were lower than the same quarter last year, the anticipated future earnings and a substantial increase in remaining performance obligations (RPOs) drove the stock price higher.

Who is Larry Ellison?

Larry Ellison serves as the chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle. Investopedia reports that under his leadership, Oracle grew from a start-up with three programmers into the largest database software supplier and the second-largest supplier of business applications. Oracle’s rapid growth under Ellison's leadership relied on his impressive track record in identifying and conquering new markets, the report said.

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In 1977, Ellison and his former Ampex colleagues, Bob Miner and Ed Oates, used $2,000 of their own money to found Software Development Laboratories, which later became Oracle. In July, he surpassed Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Fueled by investor optimism and Oracle’s impressive financial performance, Ellison's wealth has now outgrown the GDP of several nations. His rise reflects not only Oracle's momentum in AI but also Ellison’s enduring influence in global tech.

Ellison’s ascent highlights Oracle’s expanding influence in cloud computing, as the company positions itself as a major provider of cloud services, challenging industry giants like Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.