We are used to seeing names such as Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg among the richest people in the world. But now someone else has appeared at the top: Larry Ellison, founder and technology pioneer behind Oracle. Thanks to the sharp rise in Oracle’s share price, he managed to overtake Elon Musk, who immediately returned the favor. Who is this potentially richest man and visionary who has captured the world’s attention overnight? How did he manage to climb to first place, and what role did artificial intelligence, which has been moving markets with increasing confidence in recent months, play in this?
How did Oracle stock benefit from AI?
The main reason Oracle’s stock has soared to such heights is the dramatic emergence of AI technologies in their cloud business. Investors who are constantly in the loop could read about this in our article, for example. Oracle announced that its backlog of future revenue commitments had reached $455 billion. This represented an incredible 359% year-on-year increase. This figure literally thrilled investors, as it shows that the company has secured orders for many years to come and will be able to steadily generate revenue from a dynamically developing area.
By 2030, Oracle plans to achieve $144 billion in annual revenue from cloud and AI services alone. This moves the company from its position as a traditional database solution provider to one of the key players in the field of computing infrastructure for artificial intelligence. While companies such as Microsoft and Amazon have dominated the market until now, Oracle has now shown that it can compete with the biggest players. Larry Ellison, who still owns more than 40% of the company, immediately saw a huge increase in his personal wealth – to such an extent that he managed to knock Elon Musk himself off the top spot.
Oracle stock performance over time
On the day the results and new orders were announced, September 10, 2025, Oracle’s stock experienced unprecedented growth. During trading, it jumped to an all-time high of around $345 per share, an increase of approximately 43%. They eventually closed with a gain of about 36% at $328, representing the company’s biggest daily gain since the early 1990s.
This growth was primarily driven by the announcement that Oracle’s contract commitments had grown by more than 350% year-on-year to reach $455 billion. The company also said that its cloud services are set for a jump in growth – they are expected to grow by 77% to $18 billion in the current fiscal year and generate up to $144 billion annually by 2030. The stock’s performance clearly showed that investors see Oracle as one of the main winners of the current AI boom.
Who is Larry Ellison
Eighty-one-year-old Larry Ellison is a legend in the tech world, and his success story is closely linked to that of Oracle. He founded the company in 1977 and gradually built it into a global leader in databases and enterprise software solutions. Thanks to his vision and tough business approach, Oracle has managed to remain competitive even in times of dramatic market change.
Ellison has retained an exceptionally large stake in the company, more than 40%, making him one of the richest people on the planet—his fortune is directly linked to Oracle’s success on the stock market. Unlike many other billionaires, whose assets are spread across various companies, Ellison’s wealth is concentrated in Oracle, which is why every major movement in the company’s stock affects his personal financial position. Even today, his role is not merely symbolic – as chief technology officer, he continues to actively shape the direction of the company, particularly in the areas of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, which has brought Oracle back into the spotlight of the financial markets.
Currently the richest person in the world
Thanks to Oracle’s growth in value, Larry Ellison became the richest person in the world, but only for a short time. According to data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his fortune reached approximately $393 billion, surpassing Elon Musk, whose fortune at the time was around $384 billion. However, the difference was not large, and after a slight correction in Oracle’s share price, the ranking returned to Musk’s favor.
This shows that the title of the richest person in the world is relatively fragile today: all it takes is a major movement in Tesla, SpaceX, or Oracle shares, and the rankings immediately change. Bernard Arnault and Jeff Bezos also remain at the top of the list, but they are not currently experiencing such dramatic fluctuations. All that remains is to watch closely to see who will dominate the richest rankings in the long term.
