{"id":135088,"date":"2025-09-11T01:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T01:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/135088\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T01:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T01:52:10","slug":"who-is-oracles-larry-ellison-and-why-did-he-just-overtake-elon-musk-to-become-the-richest-person-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/135088\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and why did he just overtake Elon Musk to become the richest person in the world?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison suddenly dethroned Tesla CEO Elon Musk<\/a> Wednesday as the world\u2019s richest person after stock in Ellison\u2019s database software company surged by more than 40% amid rosy projections for its AI-fueled future.<\/p>\n

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index<\/a>, Ellison’s net worth, which is tied to Oracle, skyrocketed to $393 billion Wednesday \u2014 a one-day, $101 billion leap that vaulted him past Musk ($385 billion).<\/p>\n

But who is Ellison, and how did he get so rich to begin with? Here\u2019s a quick explainer.<\/p>\n

Who is Larry Ellison?<\/p>\n

Ellison, 81, was born in 1944 to an unwed mother who gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption; he did not meet his biological mother again until he was 44.<\/p>\n

Ellison attended the University of Illinois at Urbana\u2013Champaign and the University of Chicago, where he first encountered computer design. He moved to Berkeley, Calif., before graduating; his goal was to become a computer programmer.<\/p>\n

In 1977, Ellison cofounded Oracle in Santa Clara, Calif.; the company eventually came to dominate the database software industry (and later, cloud computing). As of Wednesday, Oracle ranked as the fourth-largest software company<\/a> in the world after Microsoft<\/a>, Apple<\/a> and Alphabet (Google), with a market cap of more than $922 billion.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s, Ellison emerged as \u201ca public figure known as much for his lavish lifestyle as for the database company behind his fortune,\u201d according to the BBC<\/a>; he has dabbled in aviation, restaurants, farming, tennis, yachting and movies.<\/p>\n

In April, the New York Times described Ellison as \u201cthe Silicon Valley executive who really knew how to have a good time,\u201d noting that he \u201cspent as much as $200 million building a Japanese-inspired imperial villa near Palo Alto, Calif., bought the sixth-largest Hawaiian island and dated and married and divorced with never-ending zeal.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, Ellison has positioned himself as an ally of President Trump<\/a>, appearing at the White House in January for the announcement of a project called Stargate, which will build data centers for artificial intelligence<\/a>. Ellison also funded the bulk of his son David\u2019s $8 billion bid to buy Paramount earlier this year, approved by the Federal Communications Commission under Trump<\/a>. The president has said he would like Ellison to purchase TikTok too.<\/p>\n

According to the New York Times<\/a>, Ellison’s ambition now \u201cappears\u201d to be \u201cnothing less\u201d than bringing \u201cthe country under the benevolent sway of artificial intelligence, which he has said will bring about an era of bounty and harmony\u201d \u2014 a vision that includes installing \u201ccameras everywhere, with every movement analyzed by AI\u201d and \u201ccombining thousands of databases into one enormous electronic repository, which can be mined by AI\u201d to \u201ccure diseases and fix everything else,\u201d as the Times put it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this will make for a happier citizenry,\u201d Ellison recently told former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.<\/p>\n

Ellison served as Oracle’s chief executive until 2014 and remains the company’s chairman and chief technology officer.<\/p>\n

Why did Ellison\u2019s wealth skyrocket this week?<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Oracle reported its quarterly earnings \u2014 and even though the latest numbers came in slightly below Wall Street\u2019s expectations, at $14.9 billion, the software giant projected that its future AI-fueled cloud revenue would jump to $144 billion by the 2030 fiscal year on the back of major deals with \u201cthe who’s who of AI, including OpenAI<\/a>, xAI, Meta and many others,\u201d as CEO Safra Catz said in a call with investors.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a massive jump from the company’s projection for the current fiscal year: less than $20 billion.<\/p>\n

“We expect Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue to grow 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year \u2014 and then increase to $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion, and $144 billion over the subsequent four years,” Catz explained in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no better evidence of a seismic shift happening in computing than these results that you just put up,\u201d one Wall Street analyst gushed on the earnings call.<\/p>\n

According to Yahoo Finance<\/a>, Oracle has been pouring billions into its AI ambitions by investing in data centers \u2014 effectively \u201csecuring a massive amount of Nvidia\u2019s coveted GPUs<\/a> (graphics processing units, or AI chips) and renting out that computing power\u201d in a push to \u201crival\u201d peers such as Amazon and Alphabet.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the company has also \u201claid<\/a> off<\/a> workers and reportedly discussed<\/a> eliminating cash raises and bonuses for employees this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an astonishing quarter \u2014 and demand for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure continues to build,\u201d Catz said in her statement, adding that the company plans to sign up several more multibillion-dollar customers in the coming months.<\/p>\n

Can Musk catch up?<\/p>\n

Musk held the title of the world\u2019s richest person for nearly a year, with his net worth peaking at $486 billion last December. But his wealth declined significantly in early 2025, as his work for the Trump administration weighed heavily on his companies \u2014 most notably Tesla<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last week, Tesla announced<\/a> that Musk could receive an unprecedented pay package worth more than $1 trillion if he meets some ambitious targets over the next decade, including expanding Tesla\u2019s nascent robotaxi business and growing the company\u2019s market value to at least $8.5 trillion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison suddenly dethroned Tesla CEO Elon Musk Wednesday as the world\u2019s richest person after stock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,250,75,20522,73440,87,18036,1971,73439],"class_list":["post-135088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-elon-musk","tag-entertainment","tag-larry-ellison","tag-oracle-cloud-infrastructure","tag-president-trump","tag-software-company","tag-white-house","tag-worlds-richest-person"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}