Musk vs. Ellison: A Billionaire Battle for the Top Spot
Elon Musk has once again reclaimed his title as the world’s richest person, but it was a close call. He briefly lost the top spot to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison after a massive surge in Oracle’s stock.
The dramatic shift was fueled by the AI boom. Oracle shares skyrocketed around 40%, their biggest one-day gain since 1992, after the company announced an “astonishing” quarter. Oracle’s CEO, Safra Catz, revealed the firm signed four multi-billion-dollar contracts in Q1, with its contract backlog growing by a staggering 359% to $455 billion.
Meanwhile, Musk’s wealth, largely tied to Tesla stock, has seen a drop of about 14% this year amid growing competition in the electric vehicle market.
The World’s 10 Richest People in 2025
Here’s a look at the current top 10 list, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index:
- Elon Musk ($384B)
- Larry Ellison ($383B)
- Mark Zuckerberg ($264B)
- Jeff Bezos ($252B)
- Larry Page ($210B)
- Sergey Brin ($196B)
- Steve Ballmer ($172B)
- Bernard Arnault ($162B)
- Jensen Huang ($154B)
- Michael Dell ($151B)
AI’s Impact on the Financial World
Oracle’s success highlights the immense power of the AI revolution. The company projects its Cloud Infrastructure business will grow from $18 billion this fiscal year to $144 billion over the next four years.
Ellison credited this growth to the AI boom, stating, “AI Changes Everything.” He also announced the upcoming “Oracle AI Database,” a new service that will allow customers to use large language models like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT directly on their existing databases. This will unlock the value of their data for advanced AI analysis, a move that is expected to further increase cloud demand for Oracle.