Elon Musk Only Let Larry Ellison Wear The World's Richest Human Crown For A Day… And Now He's Racing Towards Half-Trillionaire Status

Last Wednesday, Larry Ellison became just the 19th person in the last 200 years to wear the crown of the richest person in the world. Larry took the crown from Elon Musk. Considering they are good friends (Larry owns 1.4% of Tesla), you might think Elon would let Ellison enjoy his time at the top for a few weeks or months. Nope. Elon snatched that crown right back after less than a day.

Considering they are good friends (Larry owns 1.4% of Tesla), you might think Elon would let Ellison enjoy his time at the top for a few weeks or months. Nope. Elon snatched that crown right back after less than a day.

Ellison's Brief Shining Moment

Ellison's time at the top came courtesy of Oracle's historic stock surge. Shares jumped from $240 to $328 last Wednesday after blockbuster AI-driven growth projections, adding $100 billion to his fortune in just 24 hours. That pushed his net worth to an all-time high of $400 billion, finally overtaking Musk for the top spot.

But the celebration ended almost immediately.

By Thursday morning, a drop in Oracle's share price pushed Larry's net worth down to $363 billion. Simultaneously, a surge in Tesla's stock propelled Elon back to the top slot with a net worth of $399 billion.

So, in other words, Larry was the richest person in the world for not even a full 24 hours.

Elon Keeps Pushing Higher

And Elon wasn't done. Another Tesla surge on Friday saw his net worth rise to $420 billion.

And Elon wasn't done. On Monday morning, before the markets opened, it was disclosed that Elon had spent $1 billion of his own money to acquire additional shares of Tesla. The disclosure immediately sparked a rally in Tesla stock. By the end of trading on Monday, Tesla had increased 3.62%. With Tesla trading at $410 per share, plus his other assets, Musk's net worth now sits at $430 billion.

Fun fact: Elon's $1 billion purchase increased Tesla's market cap by $40 billion, from $1.28 trillion to $1.32 trillion. If you do the math, Elon spent $1 billion to make $8 billion on paper in a matter of hours 🙂

Oracle also had a good Monday, with the company's share price increasing 3.4% on the day. That leaves Larry with a net worth of $361 billion.

Peak Elon

Amazingly, $430 billion isn't even Elon's peak net worth. In mid-December of last year, when Tesla shares briefly hit $440 (for reference, it closed at $410 today), Elon's net worth hit an all-time high of $485 billion, and he was a hair shy of becoming the world's first HALF TRILLIONAIRE.

$1 Trillion Pay Package

As if reclaiming the world's richest crown wasn't enough, Elon Musk could soon have an entirely new windfall coming his way. Earlier this month, Tesla's board unveiled a proposed $975 billion incentive package for Musk — the largest executive pay plan in history.

The plan stretches over the next decade and is divided into 12 tranches of stock awards. Each tranche unlocks if Tesla achieves a combination of market cap and operational milestones. For market value alone, the benchmarks start at $2 trillion — up from about $1.3 trillion today — and top out at a staggering $8.5 trillion. Operational targets include producing 20 million vehicles, reaching 10 million Full Self-Driving subscriptions, and deploying 1 million robotaxis and 1 million humanoid robots.

If fully awarded, the package would give Musk more than 423 million additional shares, boosting his ownership stake to about 25% of Tesla. At the peak incentive target, that would translate into control of roughly $2.1 trillion worth of stock in an $8.5 trillion company.

But even with that incredible and almost impossible to comprehend incentive package, I still maintain that Larry Ellison actually has a much clearer path to becoming the world's first trillionaire.

BTW, you might assume there are lots of photos of Larry and Elon together in Getty Images. Nope. There's just one. And it's a group photo. Here it is (Larry is the far right):

(Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)