Oracle’s Ellison closes in on Elon Musk for world’s richest title

When Oracle shares surged by nearly 43 per cent to a record high on Wall Street on Wednesday, it wasn't just a win for the company- it also pushed co-founder Larry Ellison closer to challenging Elon Musk for the title of the world’s richest person.

Ellison, 81, whose wealth is largely tied to his 41 per cent stake in Oracle, saw his net worth jump by a staggering $100 billion, reaching approximately $392.6 billion, according to Forbes.

He is now rapidly closing the gap with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose fortune currently stands at $439.9 billion.

Oracle shares surged after the company announced four multi-billion-dollar contracts on Tuesday, capitalising on an industry-wide push led by AI giants like OpenAI and xAI to lock in the vast computing power required to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving AI race.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that OpenAI has signed a contract to purchase $300 billion in computing power from Oracle over roughly five years, marking one of the biggest cloud contracts ever signed. 

The stock climbed as much as 36.7 per cent, hitting a record high of $345.69, and was on track for its biggest single-day percentage gain since 1992. Oracle will add about $234 billion to its market valuation, taking the total to around $913 billion, if gains hold, and bringing the company closer to the coveted $1 trillion-dollar club.

Its shares have risen 45 per cent so far this year, outperforming the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks and the broader S&P 500 index, with investors betting big on AI-driven cloud firms.

"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," said CEO Safra Catz during a post-earnings call.

Currently, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud dominate the cloud computing market with a combined 65 per cent share, while Oracle, Alibaba, CoreWeave and others hold a smaller slice of the market.

Oracle's first-quarter results lifted shares of Nvidia, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices, which supply semiconductors used in data centres. Shares of the companies rose between 2 per cent and 8 per cent. Competitor CoreWeave's shares were up about 15 per cent.

The company has struck deals with Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft to let their cloud customers run Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) alongside native services. The revenue from these partnerships rose more than sixteenfold in the first quarter. "What matters here is that this figure now includes contributions from the Stargate venture and two other big AI players, meaning revenues beyond 2026 go much higher," said Ben Reitzes, analyst at Melius Research.

Analysts flagged Oracle's role in SoftBank and OpenAI's Stargate project as another tailwind, giving the company a foothold in the large-scale AI infrastructure project that is expected to channel about $500 billion in spending.

The company also supplies cloud services to xAI, the AI startup founded by Musk, a longtime ally of Ellison. Oracle's stock is trading at over 33.34 times its 12-month forward earnings estimates, compared with Amazon's 32.34 and Microsoft's 30.83.