Larry Ellison now world's richest: How a two-time college dropout built Oracle and pushed it to the billionaire chart

Elon Musk has lost the title of world's richest man. Oracle CTO Larry Ellison has become the world’s richest person for the first time, ending Elon Musk’s nearly year-long reign in the top spot, reported Bloomberg. Larry Ellison’s fortune soared $101 billion as of 10:10 a.m. in New York after Oracle Corp. reported quarterly results that surpassed expectations, adding that's more to come. The 81-year-old billionaire saw his net worth swell when Oracle Corp. delivered an aggressive outlook for its cloud business that triggered the skyrocketing surge in its stock.

As of 10:10 a.m. in New York, Ellison’s fortune stood at $393 billion, eclipsing Musk’s $385 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The one-day leap is the largest increase ever recorded by the index. Ellison owns about 1.16 billion shares of Oracle, which was up 40% to $338 Wednesday morning. Oracle offered a growth forecast that stunned investors late Tuesday, sending the stock through the roof.

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Larry Ellison: A college dropout who built Oracle

Larry Ellison, a two-time college dropout, surpassed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg in July to become the world's second richest man, and that time his net worth ballooned to nearly $276 billion. But what makes Ellison's story remarkable is not his wealth but his absence of college degree- which most billionaires flaunt.


Larry was born to a single mother in New York and was raised by adoptive relative in Chicago. He enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign as a science and pre-med student and his education began with promise.

However, in a tragic series of events, his adoptive mother passed away when he was in his second year and he dropped out just before his final exams. He decided to give academia another chance by enrolling at the University of Chicago, where he was introduced to computing and programming. However, after just one semester, Ellison dropped out once more — this time permanently.

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A head full of code, ambition and dreams, Larry Ellison moved to California in the early 1970s and started working as a programmer. As he juggled between contracts and consultancies, it was one particular assignment with Ampex that turned out to be turning point in his career.

How Oracle was born

Larry helped build a classified database for the CIA codenamed “Oracle" and since then, there was no looking back. By 1977, Ellison had gathered $2,000 in funds and partnered with two colleagues to launch Software Development Laboratories, the enterprise that would eventually become Oracle Corporation.

By 1986, Oracle became a publicly traded company and in the years that followed, it fiercely competed with industry giants like IBM and Sybase, driving advancements in enterprise data storage, retrieval, and eventually, cloud technology. Cut to 2025, Oracle transformed itself—this time into a leading force in cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

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With bold investments in AI infrastructure, sovereign cloud offerings, and strategic alliances with industry giants like OpenAI and NVIDIA, the company’s market value has surged past $600 billion. Although Ellison stepped down as CEO in 2014, he continues to steer the company’s vision as Executive Chairman and CTO.

The 81-year-old billionaire built his wealth over the course of the last five decades with the rise of his software company.