Oracle co-founder, Larry Ellison, has toppled Elon Musk to become the world’s richest person, ending the Tesla boss’s nearly year-long reign at the top of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bloomberg reports that Ellison’s fortune surged by a record $101bn on Wednesday after Oracle reported quarterly results that beat expectations and signalled further growth in its cloud business.
The increase lifted his wealth to $393bn, putting him ahead of Musk, whose net worth now stands at $385bn.
The 81-year-old tech billionaire’s gains mark the biggest one-day jump ever recorded on Bloomberg’s index.
Oracle’s shares, which had already risen 45 per cent this year, soared 41 per cent after the company announced strong bookings and an upbeat outlook for its cloud infrastructure unit.
Ellison, who serves as chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle, holds the bulk of his fortune in the company’s stock.
Musk, who first became the world’s richest person in 2021, had reclaimed the title last year and held it for just over 300 days.
He previously lost the crown to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and LVMH boss Bernard Arnault.
Tesla shares have fallen 13 per cent this year.
The company’s board has proposed a massive pay package for Musk that could make him the world’s first trillionaire if he hits a series of ambitious targets.
Meanwhile, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates no longer ranks among America’s 10 Richest People.
The Microsoft cofounder, who reigned for nearly a quarter century as America’s richest person, no longer makes the very top of this year’s ranking of the country’s wealthiest people, according to Forbes report on Wednesday.
Gates was long known as the richest person in America. Starting in 1991, he ranked either first or second on the Forbes 400 list of the country’s wealthiest people every year for nearly three decades.
He fell below the No. 2 spot in 2021. Now, for the first time in 34 years, Gates is not even in the top ten.
He ranks No. 14 on this year’s Forbes 400–just behind Bloomberg LP cofounder Mike Bloomberg and one spot ahead of the country’s (and the world’s) richest woman, Walmart heiress Alice Walton.
Of course, Gates still commands a massive fortune–Forbes estimates he’s worth $107 billion, the same as a year ago.
As other billionaires on the list get richer, Gates is determined to get poorer. In May he announced that he plans to give away 99% of his remaining fortune to his charitable Gates Foundation over the next two decades.
The foundation will shut its doors in 2045, the year Gates will turn 90.
To part with 99% of his wealth, Gates plans to donate “billions a year” to his foundation.
“It won’t be equal [amounts] every year because it’ll somewhat depend on what’s going on with the markets,” he told Forbes in May.
“My will is very clear that when I die, all that money goes into the foundation and they would have to figure out what they do with assets.”
Forbes estimates that he’s donated $7 billion to the Gates Foundation since last year’s Forbes 400.
A spokesperson for Gates declined to comment as reported by Forbes on Wednesday.
The report further indicated that Gates’ dropped in the ranks of U.S. billionaires began the year he and Melinda French Gates, his wife of 27 years, divorced.
He fell to No. 4 on the 2021 Forbes 400 list, worth an estimated $134 billion. A year ago, he dropped to No. 9, worth $107 billion.
The decline in net worth came as French Gates resigned as co-chair of the Gates Foundation and announced that as part of her departure, she would receive $12.5 billion for her own philanthropy. Those funds look to have been transferred from Bill Gates’ fortune.
Forbes now estimates that, in addition to the philanthropic money, French Gates received assets currently worth $29 billion as part of the divorce settlement. Spokespeople for Gates and French Gates have declined to comment on the settlement.
The Microsoft cofounder, who will turn 70 in October, has set big goals for the Gates Foundation in the decades ahead. One aim is that no mother, baby or child dies of preventable causes.
The foundation will also continue its efforts to eradicate polio and reduce the impact of malaria–part of a larger foundation effort to reduce the spread of infectious disease.
Along the way, Gates’ net worth will likely continue to drop—pushing him further and further down the ranks of The Forbes 400.
