The difference between the two is nearly 30 years.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison, 81, has surpassed Elon Musk, 54, to become the richest person in the world with a fortune of nearly $400 billion. His journey from being an orphan, dropping out of college, to where he is now is one of the most impressive career stories in the tech world.

Difficult background – unstable childhood

Larry Ellison was born in 1944 in New York, to a family of Jewish descent. His father was an Italian-American pilot, but left the family before Larry was born. His mother, who was only 19, couldn’t afford to raise the child, so she sent Larry to his aunt and uncle in Chicago to take care of him.

Ellison’s childhood was not very peaceful. He lived in a low-class working family, growing up in the context of a lack of family affection. The adoptive father often criticized and thought that Larry would never make it happen. That has forged in him a strong spirit of resistance and the desire to prove himself.

Ellison attended the University of Illinois, then transferred to the University of Chicago, but dropped out. Instead of continuing his academic career, he went to California — where the tech wave of the 1960s was rising — to look for opportunities.

Here, Ellison worked a variety of odd jobs in the tech industry, from technician to programmer. He quickly showed his ability to learn on his own, creativity and ambition far greater than his contemporaries.

Founding Oracle – a historic reckless

In 1977, along with colleagues Bob Miner and Ed Oates, Ellison founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with a capital of just $2,000. The company later changed its name to Oracle, inspired by a CIA database project called “Oracle”.

Ellison’s boldness was that he believed that relational databases — a concept that was relatively new at the time — would be the future of technology. He went all out to turn this idea into a commercial product.

In 1986, Oracle went public and quickly became the world’s second-largest software company, behind only Microsoft.

Ellison has a reputation for not being afraid to collide. He has repeatedly publicly fought with Bill Gates (Microsoft) or Hasso Plattner (SAP).

He saw competition as a game of life and death, where the winner had to dominate the entire market. It is this style that has helped Oracle expand violently, acquiring many large technology companies such as PeopleSoft, Siebel, Sun Microsystems – thereby strengthening its position in the field of enterprise software.

Not only prominent in business, Ellison also attracts attention for his lavish life. In particular, in 2012, Ellison acquired 98% of Lanai Island in Hawaii for about $300 million, turning it into a “resort mecca” and a laboratory for technology and environmental projects.

He was also an avid sports enthusiast: he sponsored the America’s Cup winning sailing team and founded the Indian Wells Masters tennis tournament.

Leap forward thanks to AI and cloud computing

According to data released on September 10, Larry Ellison’s net worth reached about $393 billion, surpassing Elon Musk with $385 billion. This gap comes from Oracle shares soaring more than 35% after the financial report exceeded expectations, and forecast explosive revenue from the AI infrastructure segment in the coming years.

In particular, Oracle has signed large contracts with many customers, including OpenAI. The market believes that Oracle is seizing a “golden opportunity” to become a formidable counterweight to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud in the race to provide infrastructure for AI.

Ellison now owns about 40% of Oracle shares, or more than 1.15 billion shares, bringing his net worth to more than $100 billion overnight.

Larry Ellison’s surpassing Elon Musk has a lot of meaning. Not only does it show the fierce volatility of asset rankings, but it also reflects a new order in the global tech world: from Musk’s era of electric vehicles, space and high technology to the era of AI and cloud – where Ellison is holding the upper hand.

While Tesla, SpaceX and X (Twitter) still face many challenges, Oracle directly benefits from the AI craze, which is considered the “new oil” of the digital age.

Despite being the richest person in the world, Larry Ellison still faces many challenges:

Competitive Pressure: Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are dominating the majority of the cloud market.

Stock volatility: Ellison’s wealth is heavily dependent on the value of Oracle, which can change rapidly with the market.

Generational Transition: At the age of 81, the question of successor and long-term strategy for Oracle is becoming increasingly important.