The world has a new No.2 richest person behind No.1 Elon Musk. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) has slipped by Mark Zuckerberg as his net worth hit $254 billion according to Bloomberg. Musk’s figure is $349 billion. There is a striking difference between the two. Ellison’s figure is up $57 billion this year. Musk has dropped $84 billion. In each case, the reason is because of the change in the value of the two public companies they run.
Musk’s drop has been widely chronicled. The CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has watched unit sales drop by over 10% in the second quarter. The figure is worse across most of Europe. He has rising competition in China, which is mostly from local companies like BYD. His time spent cutting federal government expenses which allied him with President Trump has upset some current Tesla owners and undermined the opinions of potential buyers. Tesla’s stock has dropped 30% this year. That brings its market cap to $959 billion. Musk owns 13% of Tesla.
Musk has two things going for him. The value of SpaceX, which he leads, moved up recently to $400 billion. He owns 42% of the rocket maker and has 79% of the voting shares. The value of xAI, the artificial intelligence and social media company has also risen as high as $80 billion.
Larry Ellison started Oracle in 1977. It is primarily a cloud computing and database company. He never graduated from college. He is now 80 years old. Oracle’s growth has exploded. Ten years ago, its revenue was $38 billion. In 2024, it was $53 billion. It is also viewed as one of the top AI companies in the world
Oracle’s stock is up 41% this year against an S&P run up of only 6%. Its market cap has reached $658 billion. Ellison owns 48% of the company.
Ellison could be in a race for the world’s richest person for some time. Zuckerberg is only $1 billion behind him. Jeff Bezos is behind by only $13 billion.
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