(JW) – Elon Musk has lost his title of “world’s richest person” title to the cofounder of artificial intelligence giant Oracle, Larry Ellison, accroding to financial news agency Bloomberg.
Ellison’s wealth is said to have jumped by $101 billion to $393 billion after Oracle’s stunningly strong earnings report Tuesday evening, surpassing Musk’s net worth of $385 billion.
Oracle (ORCL) reported surging demand for its data center capacity from AI customers, launching the stock into the stratosphere.
Shares are 41% higher on Wednesday, on pace for the stock’s biggest single-day gain since 1992, CNN reported.
CEO Safra Catz announced on Tuesday after the stock market closed that Oracle signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with customers during the quarter, and she expects to sign several more in the coming months.
That electric forecast was powered by Oracle’s emergence as a key provider of infrastructure that powers AI companies’ enormous demands for computing power – Oracle’s bread and butter as a cloud services and database software provider.
In July, Oracle announced a deal to provide ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI with 4.5 gigawatts of electricity to power its AI software.
“We’ll be talking about this one for a long time,” said Ben Reitzes, analyst at Melius Research, about Oracle’s earnings report in a note to investors Wednesday.
Reitzes called Oracle’s $455 billion backlog in demand for its AI services staggering.
Ellison is Oracle’s largest individual shareholder and could capture the title of world’s richest person if the stock extends its extraordinary gains when the markets open Wednesday.
The stock’s jump is exceedingly rare for a company that has a massive market value of just under $700 billion – the 13th most-valuable stock on the market at Tuesday’s close. Oracle is now on the cusp of surpassing $1 trillion in market value.