Larry Ellison, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of US-based software giant Oracle, recently ascended to the position of the world's richest person, surpassing billionaire Elon Musk. This remarkable achievement occurred on Wednesday, September 10, following an unprecedented single-day net worth gain of $101 billion, as reported by Bloomberg. This substantial increase, recorded at 10:10 am (EDT) in New York, propelled Ellison's net worth to an astonishing $393 billion, eclipsing Elon Musk's $385 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Notably, this $101 billion surge marks the largest single-day net worth increase ever documented by the index.

A significant portion of Larry Ellison's immense wealth is intricately linked to his holdings in Oracle, the software company he co-founded in 1977. Ellison served as the Chief Executive Officer of Oracle from its inception until September 2014. His recent rise to the top of the wealth rankings involved surpassing Elon Musk, who had held the title since 2021. In the interim, Musk had briefly lost his position to Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos and later to LVMH's CEO Bernard Arnault. Musk had reclaimed the title in 2024, maintaining it for over 300 days until Ellison's record-breaking gain on September 10.

The catalyst for Ellison's monumental wealth surge was Oracle's exceptional quarterly results, which exceeded market expectations, leading to a significant jump in its share price. Oracle shares soared more than 40% to $338.53 during intraday trading on Tuesday, up from $241.51 at the previous Wall Street close. The company's strong performance was not only attributed to its quarterly earnings but also to its disclosure of a burgeoning demand for its cloud services, particularly from artificial intelligence (AI) companies. Oracle CEO Safra Catz stated, “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.”

This surge in Oracle's cloud business underscores a broader industry trend, with major players like OpenAI and xAI intensely competing to secure massive computing capacities essential for advancing in the AI race. While Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud collectively dominate the cloud computing market with an estimated 65% share, Oracle, alongside Alibaba, CoreWeave, and others, is actively capturing a significant slice. The software giant's impressive trajectory is further highlighted by its stock performance, with shares gaining over 492% in the last five years and more than 116% in the past year alone on the New York Stock Exchange.