Elon Musk has reclaimed his perch as the world’s richest man, but his grip on the title is far from secure. The Tesla and SpaceX boss edged back ahead of Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison on Wednesday evening after a dramatic swing in fortunes driven by a stock market frenzy.
Oracle shares had surged as much as 43% to a record intraday high of about $346, briefly propelling Ellison past Musk on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Investors piled into the enterprise-software giant after it projected massive revenue growth in its cloud infrastructure division, powered by surging demand from AI clients. The rally sent Oracle’s market capitalization soaring to $970 billion intraday, before settling at $922 billion by the close.
For Ellison, who owns a 41% stake in Oracle, the rally added nearly $89 billion to his net worth in a single day. At one point, his fortune stood at nearly $400 billion, eclipsing Musk’s $383 billion tally from Tuesday. However, by market close Wednesday, Oracle stock had cooled to around $328, trimming Ellison’s gains and leaving him level with Musk at $383 billion. A marginal 0.2% uptick in Tesla’s shares pushed Musk’s fortune to $384 billion, allowing him to reclaim the top slot.
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The shifting leaderboard underscores a fundamental contrast in how their fortunes are built. Musk’s wealth is tethered tightly to Tesla’s stock, which has been on a volatile ride this year — sliding 14% and wiping $48 billion from his net worth in the process. Ellison, meanwhile, has ridden the momentum of Oracle’s cloud business, which has surged 97% year-to-date thanks to the AI boom, cementing his status as the biggest wealth gainer of 2024 with a staggering $191 billion increase.
The race between the two tycoons has left rivals trailing. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds third place at $264 billion, followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at $252 billion, according to Bloomberg’s index.
With Oracle and Tesla both trading higher in Thursday’s premarket — up 1.6% and 1% respectively as of 6:55 a.m. ET — the tug-of-war for the wealth crown could flip again before the day is out.
But the rivalry between Musk and Ellison carries a longer backstory. Musk has commanded the number one spot for much of the past two years, largely due to Tesla’s explosive growth and his personal stakes in SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter). Yet his outspoken political involvement — from frequent clashes with regulators to public endorsements of controversial policies — has coincided with a slowdown in Tesla sales, particularly in key markets where consumers have pushed back against his political persona. That slowdown has sharpened the volatility of Tesla’s stock, leaving Musk more exposed to swings in investor sentiment.
Ellison, by contrast, has seen his fortune rise on a steadier footing. Long known as one of Silicon Valley’s most aggressive competitors, the Oracle founder has reinvented his company from an aging database provider into a serious player in cloud infrastructure, now buoyed by AI-driven demand. His fortune is increasingly anchored in Oracle’s ability to capture a slice of the generative AI wave — a growth story viewed by Wall Street as more sustainable than Musk’s Tesla, which faces rising competition in electric vehicles from China and legacy automakers.
This current shift in their wealth rankings, therefore, is more than a fleeting number. It is believed to reflect a turning point of Musk’s reliance on a volatile EV market complicated by politics, versus Ellison’s newfound momentum in a sector where AI demand is rewriting the rules of tech wealth.
