Perplexity Secures Funding and Larry Ellison Might Surpass Musk

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From Zero to Richest: Larry Ellison's $101 Billion Day

Larry Ellison just did something that has never happened in recorded history. The 81-year-old Oracle co-founder gained $101 billion in a single day - the largest one-day wealth increase ever tracked by Bloomberg.investopedia+2

In less than 24 hours, Ellison leap-frogged from having $294 billion to owning $393 billion, officially dethroning Elon Musk as the world's richest person. Musk's net worth sits at $385 billion, meaning Ellison didn't just edge past him - he crushed the competition by $8 billion.fortune+3

The Oracle Earnings That Broke Wall Street

What caused this financial earthquake? Oracle's quarterly earnings report on Tuesday night sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley. The database giant announced that its remaining performance obligations - basically contracted revenue they haven't collected yet - exploded by 359% to $455 billion.cnbc+3

Think about that number for a second. Oracle's entire cloud business was generating $18 billion annually just months ago. Now they're sitting on nearly half a trillion dollars in future contracts.investors+1

CEO Safra Catz dropped another bombshell during the earnings call: "Over the next few months, we expect to sign-up several additional multi-billion-dollar customers and RPO is likely to exceed half-a-trillion dollars".futuriom+1

Oracle's stock price went absolutely nuts. Shares rocketed up 40% in a single day, pushing the company's market value from around $700 billion to nearly $950 billion. At one point during trading, Oracle was flirting with joining the exclusive $1 trillion club.foxbusiness+2

The AI Gold Rush That Changed Everything

Oracle found itself in the perfect position when artificial intelligence exploded. While competitors like Microsoft and Amazon focused on general cloud services, Oracle specialized in the extreme computing power that AI companies desperately needed.cnbc+1

The results speak for themselves. Oracle's cloud infrastructure revenue grew 55% year-over-year to $3.3 billion in just one quarter. But even more impressive was their "MultiCloud database revenue" - sales of Oracle products running on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft clouds - which grew an astronomical 1,529%.futuriom+1

Ellison explained Oracle's secret weapon during the earnings call: "We have large companies that are buying basically their own Oracle Cloud regions... They don't want to have any neighbors in their cloud. They want the full cloud". Oracle can deliver private cloud setups at 1% of what competitors charge.futuriom

The AI inferencing market - where companies customize AI models for their specific data - is where Oracle sees the biggest opportunity. As Ellison put it: "The AI inferencing market will be much, much larger than the AI training market... It's AI inferencing that will change everything".futuriom

How Ellison Built His Empire

Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle back in 1977 with a $2,000 investment. The company started as a database software firm, but Ellison had bigger ambitions. Even when he famously called cloud computing "complete gibberish" in 2008, he was secretly planning Oracle's transformation.mitrade+1

Today, Ellison owns approximately 1.16 billion shares of Oracle - about 41% of the entire company. This massive stake means his wealth moves directly with Oracle's stock price. When the stock doubles, so does his fortune.investopedia+1

But Ellison isn't just sitting on database money. His family recently expanded into media when his son David finalized an $8 billion acquisition of Paramount Global - the parent company of CBS and MTV. The Ellison family funded $6 billion of that deal from their own wealth.nbcnews

Elon Musk's Spectacular Fall from Grace

While Ellison was soaring, Elon Musk was experiencing the opposite trajectory. Tesla's stock has been hemorrhaging value throughout 2025, dropping more than 18% year-to-date.finance.yahoo+1

Musk's wealth peaked at $486 billion in December 2024, but has been sliding ever since. His net worth has dropped by more than $75 billion in 2025 alone. Some estimates put his total loss at over $126 billion since his peak.thehill+4

Tesla faces multiple headwinds. The company reported a 16% decrease in auto revenues compared to the previous year. Sales are declining in Europe and China despite price cuts on electric vehicles. Tesla's quarterly profits dropped 17% to $1.17 billion - about two-thirds of what the company was earning in 2022.forbes+1

Political controversy has also hurt Tesla's brand. Musk's association with the Trump administration sparked boycotts and protests. Tesla facilities faced vandalism, including Molotov cocktails thrown at cars in Las Vegas and charging stations set ablaze in Boston.finance.yahoo+1

The federal government's elimination of $7,500 electric vehicle tax credits is another major blow. These incentives represented approximately $3.5 billion in "free money" for Tesla in 2024.forbes

The Perplexity Phenomenon: $20 Billion in Three Years

While tech billionaires were trading the top spot, another AI story was quietly unfolding. Perplexity AI, the search startup that's challenging Google, just secured $200 million in new funding at a $20 billion valuation.webpronews+2

This represents absolutely incredible growth. Perplexity started with a $520 million valuation in January 2024. By July 2025, it hit $18 billion. Now it's worth $20 billion - a nearly 4,000% increase in less than two years.businessinsider+1

The company's business metrics are equally impressive. Perplexity's annual recurring revenue jumped from $35 million to over $150 million in just one year. That's more than 400% growth.businessinsider

Perplexity has raised approximately $1.5 billion to date from heavy-hitting investors including Nvidia, SoftBank, and Jeff Bezos. The startup's frequent fundraising - this is its fourth major round in under two years - highlights the capital-intensive nature of competing in AI.investing+2

The Audacious Chrome Gambit

Perplexity made headlines with an even bolder move: a $34.5 billion all-cash offer to buy Google's Chrome browser. This bid is nearly double Perplexity's own $20 billion valuation.latimes+3

Chrome has over 3.5 billion users and commands more than 60% of the global browser market. Acquiring it would give Perplexity massive leverage in the AI search wars.aljazeera+3

The offer came as Google faces potential antitrust remedies. A federal judge is considering whether to force Google to divest Chrome to restore competition in search. The Justice Department has specifically called for Chrome's sale as part of the legal remedies.reuters+3

Perplexity isn't the only interested party. OpenAI, Yahoo, and private equity firm Apollo Global Management have all expressed interest in Chrome. But Google hasn't indicated any willingness to sell and plans to appeal the antitrust ruling.finance.yahoo+3

Industry experts called Perplexity's bid a "stunt" that significantly undervalues Chrome. The browser generates massive amounts of user data that helps Google dominate online advertising - making it worth far more than $34.5 billion.searchengineland+1

The New AI Hierarchy

These developments reveal a fascinating shift in Silicon Valley's power structure. Traditional tech giants are being challenged by AI-first companies with astronomical valuations.

Perplexity launched its own AI browser called Comet that can perform tasks on users' behalf. If successful, it could disrupt how people search and browse the internet. The company views browsers as "strategic control points for the next era of agentic search and online advertising".tech.yahoo+3

Meanwhile, Oracle's transformation from a legacy database company to an AI infrastructure powerhouse shows how quickly fortunes can change in tech. Just a few years ago, Oracle was considered a has-been. Now it's the backbone of the AI revolution.

What This Means for the Future

Ellison's record-breaking wealth gain signals that we're still in the early stages of the AI boom. Companies that control the massive computing infrastructure needed for AI training and inference will likely capture enormous value.

Oracle's success also highlights the importance of specialization. While Amazon, Microsoft, and Google built general-purpose cloud platforms, Oracle focused specifically on the extreme performance needs of AI workloads. This laser focus is paying off spectacularly.

For Perplexity, the $20 billion valuation reflects investor belief that AI-powered search could eventually challenge Google's dominance. The company's aggressive moves - from the Chrome bid to rapid fundraising - show how much capital it takes to compete at the highest levels of AI.

The wealth reshuffling between Ellison and Musk also demonstrates how quickly fortunes can change in the modern economy. Musk held the richest person title for 300 days, but Oracle's AI surge propelled Ellison past him in a single trading session.fortune

As AI continues transforming every industry, we're likely to see more dramatic shifts in both company valuations and personal wealth. The race to build artificial general intelligence is creating winners and losers at unprecedented speed - and scale.