Elon Musk dethroned: What Larry Ellison’s rise as the world’s richest man means for the AI boom

Elon Musk has lost his crown. After 300 days as the world’s richest person, the Tesla CEO was briefly toppled by an unlikely contender: Oracle’s (NYSE: ORCL) Co-Founder and chairman Larry Ellison.

The 81-year-old’s fortune jumped by a record US$101 billion in a single day after the software giant's shares surged as much as 43% overnight, lifting his net worth to US$393 billion - ahead of Musk’s US$385 billion - before slipping back. It was the first time Ellison held the title, and the biggest one-day wealth increase ever recorded.

For Australian growth investors, Ellison’s rise is more than a billionaire beauty contest. It’s a flashing neon sign that the AI boom is rewriting the global technology playbook and where the money is flowing.

Why did Oracle’s stock explode?

Oracle isn’t exactly the kind of company you expect to double in a year. Long dismissed as a “boring” database and enterprise software giant - more utility than growth stock - its shares have stunned the market, climbing nearly 100% year-to-date, including a 40% surge after September earnings.

But why? It's thanks to artificial intelligence cloud growth.

The opening bullet points of Oracle’s Q1 FY26 results below tell the story (the red added for extra emphasis). Imagine a property developer revealing nearly US$500 billion worth of projects in the pipeline - that’s effectively what Oracle just did with its cloud backlog.

What also stunned the market is the level of demand coming from what were once considered traditional competitors. MultiCloud database - a cloud computing strategy that pulls together services from more than one provider to meet a company's needs - saw its revenue from Amazon, Google and Microsoft grow at the incredible rate of 1,529% in Q1. 

"We expect MultiCloud revenue to grow substantially every quarter for several years as we deliver another 37 data centers to our three Hyperscaler partners, for a total of 71,” said Ellison.

It’s a reminder that Oracle has embedded itself deeply into the enterprise tech stack. Or, as the former face of Magellan, Hamish Douglass, once put it:

“Installing Oracle software is like installing an elevator in a building - once it’s in, it’s very hard to remove.”

Wall Street blown away

Analysts scrambled to raise targets in the wake of Oracle’s results. According to research sourced from AlphaSense:

That level of across-the-board enthusiasm is rare - especially for a company viewed as a relic that survived the dot-com era.

What it means for growth investors

All the billionaire headlines aside, the real message is clear: the AI boom is alive and accelerating.

At Livewire Live 2025 this week, Joshua Cummings summed it up neatly:

“AI is not a thing. It’s not the next snazzy app. It is a change in the very fabric and architecture of our software stack globally. Right now, we’ve focused on the pick-and-shovel providers.”

Qiao Ma agreed, reminding investors that we are only three years into the AI trend:

“There’s plenty of runway left. The key is thinking about what might change.”

Equities

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How to get exposure to AI

Australian investors have several avenues to gain exposure to the AI boom:

• Betashares Nasdaq 100 ETF (ASX: NDQ) – invests in U.S. technology leaders including NVIDIA, Amazon, Google and Broadcom (note: Oracle is not a constituent).
• Global X Artificial Intelligence ETF (ASX: GXAI) – offers direct exposure to AI enablers and users, holding Oracle, Alibaba, Tencent and Taiwan Semiconductor. Another of their offerings is the Global X FANG+ ETF (ASX:FANG), a concentrated, high-conviction play on the biggest U.S. tech names.
• ETF Shares US Technology ETF (CBOE: WWW) and ETF Shares Magnificent 7+ ETF (CBOE: HUGE) are new to the market and offer exposure to tech stocks in different ways, with the former holding shares in Oracle.
• Munro Global Growth Fund (ASX: MAET) – the fund, actively managed by global growth specialist Munro Partners, holds substantial AI allocations across Oracle, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and TSMC - while retaining the flexibility to short..

Final thoughts

Tesla may one day propel Musk back to the top - especially with a trillion-dollar pay package on the horizon. But for now, Ellison’s elevator has gone straight past him, powered by AI infrastructure.

For Australian investors, the sheer wealth being created - and the eye-popping numbers Oracle has delivered - highlight that the AI runway still has a long way to go. 

The only real question, as always, is the question of price.