Meta's Mark Zuckerberg is no longer world's second richest person, he is taken over by....his net worth is...

While Tesla CEO Elon Musk retains the top position in the world’s richest list, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison eclipsed Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to take the second spot in Forbes’ rich list. With $242 billion net worth, he reportedly overtook Bezos and Zuckerberg as shares of his cloud computing titan surged to an all-time high on Thursday. 

According to Forbes data, Ellison’s net worth surged by $25 billion to $242 billion by midday Thursday, marking the largest daily bump of any billionaire. The gain was enough to surpass Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos’ $228 billion and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s $239 billion net worth to clinch the second spot on Forbes’ real-time billionaires ranking. Ellison is now behind his longtime friend Elon Musk who boasts a net worth of $407 billion.

As Oracle stocks shot up more than 13 per cent Wednesday's earnings report revealed that that it registered stronger profits and sales than  Wall Street expected for the company’s financial quarter ending last month. Deutsche Bank analyst Brad Zelnick described Oracle’s earnings update as a “watershed” moment. “When Larry Ellison speaks of entering a new era of cloud computing, all should pay careful attention,” he added a note.

In a post-earnings call with an analyst, Ellison said, “Most of the world’s valuable data is stored in an Oracle database. All of those databases are moving to the cloud. Oracle runs everywhere.” Oracle is a major provider of cloud applications and cloud infrastructure. Ellison’s stake in Oracle is a major source of wealth for the billionaire, his holding amounts to roughly 41%, according to Forbes.

Meanwhile, Oracle has boosted its fiscal year 2026 revenue target to over $67 billion, up from $66 billion. The target reflects a 16% year-over-year growth in constant currency terms. The company has projected fiscal year 2027, expecting revenue growth to accelerate even further, surpassing 20%. Notably, Oracle's stock performance, which has seen significant gains of nearly 21% year-to-date and over 43% in the past 12 months, has driven this optimistic outlook.