Oracle slump sends Ellison sliding down ranks of world’s richest

A frenzied, artificial intelligence (AI)-fuelled rally in Oracle stock briefly made Larry Ellison the world’s richest person in September. But a prolonged slump since then has seen the tech giant give up all those gains and more, delivering a US$130 billion hit to Ellison’s net worth.

Oracle’s swoon has vaulted Alphabet co-founder Larry Page past Ellison and into the number two spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for the first time.

Page, 52, who served two stints as Google’s chief executive officer before it was restructured as Alphabet, now has a net worth of US$256.9 billion, his highest total ever. He still trails Elon Musk’s US$421.8 billion, while Ellison, 81, slipped to third place with US$253.3 billion.

Oracle’s shares gained 36 per cent on Sep 10 after the Austin-based company reported soaring demand for its AI-adjacent cloud infrastructure business. That added US$89 billion to Ellison’s net worth, the largest one-day gain ever recorded by Bloomberg’s wealth index.

However, it only took two months to wipe out those gains. Oracle’s AI ambitions are closely tied to OpenAI and it is counting on hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues from OpenAI over the next few years. That’s far more cash than the large language model developer is currently generating.

Markets have also wavered as Oracle has leaned more heavily on debt financing. It’s preparing a US$38 billion bond offering to pay for AI data centre construction, even as its net adjusted debt already hovers around US$100 billion. The company’s shares have seen six straight weekly declines since its September peak, with its stock down 39 per cent from its all-time high, closing Friday at US$198.76.

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Alphabet’s shares, meanwhile, have jumped 58 per cent this year, including 3.5 per cent on Friday, following a wave of favourable reviews for its Gemini AI model, renewing hopes it could be competitive with peers including Anthropic and OpenAI. That helped add US$88.6 billion to Page’s net worth in 2025, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index.

While neither Page nor Alphabet co-founder Sergey Brin, 52, currently hold operational titles, Brin said at a conference earlier this year that he planned on returning to a more hands-on role at the company.

Brin is currently ranked fifth on Bloomberg’s wealth list with a net worth of US$239.9 billion. BLOOMBERG

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