NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The battle among billionaires for bragging rights as the world\u2019s richest person got heated Wednesday with the surprising surge of an old contender: Larry Ellison.<\/p>\n
In a stunning few minutes after markets opened, stock in Ellison\u2019s Oracle Corp. rocketed more than a third, enough for him to temporarily wrest the title from its longtime holder Elon Musk and hand it to the software giant\u2019s co-founder.<\/p>\n
But the stock market is fickle, and Musk was back on top by the end of the day, at least according to Bloomberg, as Oracle gave up a bit of its earlier gains.<\/p>\n
For those keeping score, the difference now is a billion, which isn\u2019t much given the size of the figures: Musk\u2019s $384.2 billion versus $383.2 billion for Ellison. <\/p>\n
The dueling fortunes are so big each could fund the lifestyles of 5 million typical American families for a year, about the entire population of Florida, allowing them to all quit their jobs. Or they could just tell all of South Africa to take a vacation for year and produce nothing, based on its gross domestic product. <\/p>\n
The brief switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle powered by multibillion dollar orders from customers as the artificial-intelligence race heats up.<\/p>\n
Musk became the world\u2019s richest person for the first time four years ago. A big reason is his stake in a hot, but now cooling, electric car maker, Tesla.<\/p>\n
Stock in the company has been moving in the opposite direction of Oracle\u2019s, dropping 14% so far this year. Musk also controls several private companies, including rocket maker SpaceX, his artificial intelligence company xAI and the former Twitter, now called X.<\/p>\n
Ellison owns about 40% of Oracle, which means its surging stock added $100 billion to his net worth in little over a half-hour after the stock market opened. <\/p>\n