Oracle's Ellison closes in on Musk as world's richest

NEW YORK — Billionaire Elon Musk is at risk of losing his title as the world's wealthiest person to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, whose software giant appears poised for massive AI riches through a major deal with OpenAI.

Ellison, 81, amassed about $95 billion in additional wealth on Wednesday as Oracle shares skyrocketed after the nearly 50-year-old company forecast massive revenue growth thanks to large contracts that will dwarf current revenue.

That rise lifted Ellison's overall fortune to nearly $390 billion compared with Musk's roughly $436 billion, according to Forbes' real-time billionaires index.

A Bloomberg wealth index placed Ellison's bounty slightly ahead of Musk's, designating the Oracle chief number one at the moment. The difference in the tallies relates to how some of their huge holdings are estimated.

Ellison and Musk are close friends, with the former often coming to the latter's aid during challenging periods in the Tesla tycoon's career.

He invested more than $1 billion in Musk's buyout of Twitter and served on Tesla's board for many years.

Ellison holds more than 1.1 billion shares of Oracle, accounting for more than 40 percent of the company's equity, according to S&P Capital IQ.

Oracle CEO Safra Catz called the just-finished quarter "astonishing" as the company signed "four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers".

Oracle projected that its cloud business revenues would grow 77 percent in the current fiscal year to $18 billion. In subsequent years, revenues are expected to rise to $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion and $144 billion.

The bulk of Oracle's new contracts comes from an agreement for Open-AI to purchase some $300 billion in computing power over roughly five years, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday citing people familiar with the matter.

The publication described Oracle's contract with OpenAI as a "risky gamble" for both companies that will likely require Oracle to take on additional debt to finance the AI chips.

The contract will also tie Oracle's future to the fate of a single company, the Journal said.

Agencies Via Xinhua