New Delhi: For some time the list of worlds top 10 richest men was a bit stagnant with Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk perched at the top followed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Now Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have gone down one rank each and the number two position has been acquired by Larry Ellison the Oracle co-founder whose net worth shot up to an estimated $275.9 billion in July 2025. Who are the top 4 richest people? Elon Musk remains the world’s richest person with $411.4 billion followed by Larry Ellison of Oracle with $275.9 billion. Mark Zuckerberg is now at third place with $235.7 billion followed by Jeff Bezos at fourth place with $227 billion. The sudden surge in Larry Ellison’s fortune has come on the back of a powerful rally in Oracle’s stock which soared 32% in June alone. Ellison holds nearly 41% of Oracle while he added more than $56 billion in just over a month. With Ellison at the forefront Oracle’s strong earnings and momentum in the tech sector have turned it into a key player in the AI arms race. Who is Larry Ellison? Lawrence Ellison is an American businessman and entrepreneur who co-founded software company Oracle Corporation. He was Oracles chief executive officer (CEO) from 1977 to 2014 and is now its chief technology officer and executive chairman. As of June 2025 Ellison was the third-wealthiest person in the world according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the second-wealthiest person in the world according to Forbes. Larry Ellison has since 1977 led Oracle to success and recognition worldwide with strong earnings and provided it a fillip in the tech sector turning the company into a key player in the AI arms race. His vision and assertive business tactics led Oracle to become one of the world’s largest database software provider and a formidable player in enterprise tech. Ellison was born in New York City in 1944 to to Florence Spellman an unwed Jewish mother. His biological father was an Italian-American United States Army Air Corps pilot. He was raised by his aunt and uncle on Chicago’s South Side. He dropped out of college twice then spent 10 years coding for companies like Ampex and Amdahl. How was Oracle formed? Larry Ellison Bob Miner and Ed Oates co-founded Oracle in 1977 in Santa Clara California as Software Development Laboratories (SDL). SDL changed its name to Relational Software Inc (RSI) in 1979 then again to Oracle Systems Corporation in 1983 to align itself more closely with its flagship product Oracle Database. Among Oracle’s early success was a $50000 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contract to develop a relational database management system codenamed Oracle. That contract not only gave the company its name but also its first major customer. Within two years of formation Oracle released the first commercial version of its SQL-based database system. Ellison left the post of the CEO in 2014 but remains chairman and chief technology officer.