Larry Ellison just learned the hard way that money really does come and go… sometimes in billion-dollar chunks.

The Oracle co-founder (and part-time movie studio collector) briefly knocked Elon Musk off the top spot last week as the world’s richest man after Oracle’s stock mooned 36% higher. So much so that his net worth spiked $101 billion overnight to a ridiculous $393 billion.

But Wall Street giveth, and Wall Street yeeteth away. Within two days, Ellison lost $34 billion after everyone woke up and realize “maybe Oracle stock at these levels is a little insane.” Meanwhile, Musk’s net worth rose by $35 billion in the same time span… probably because Tesla traders can’t stop buying out-of-the-money calls after Elon promised everyone for the upteenth time that his robot experiment will cure world hunger.

Of course, what set the rocket off was Oracle announcing a $300 billion cloud contract with OpenAI. Which was the biggest deal of its kind. The suits and degenerates lost their damn minds, acting like Oracle hadn’t spent the last decade being Silicon Valley’s version of beige carpeting.

(Source: New York Times)

Because Ellison controls over 40% of Oracle, his fortune rocketed up with every tick of the chart. And for a second there, he joined the ultra-exclusive “beat Elon for a minute” club alongside Jeff Bezos and Bernard Arnault (Louis Vuitton owner).

But then the GPU high wore off, and economists started warning this looked less like Einstein’s master plan and more like an AI acid trip. It makes sense if you actually do the math. OpenAI pulls in around $12 billion a year, so committing $300B over five years is no different than a Starbucks barista financing a private jet because they picked up an extra Saturday shift.

(Source: Reuters)

UC Berkeley’s J. Bradford DeLong called it like the straight edumucated gangster he is… in his view, investors had “second thoughts” about whether Oracle can actually deliver… or if Ellison just rented a bunch of Nvidia GPUs to fool us all (highly likely). At the same time Ellison’s fortune was free-falling, Elon was busy adding $35B to his own net worth… mostly because Tesla’s stock decided to float on pure ego fumes. He gained $35B in two days for no real reason other than hopes and dreams and a November shareholder meeting where investors think he’ll pull another rabbit out of the hat.

And the trading data tells the whole story. Options traders are piling into Tesla calls on the assumption Elon wants the stock higher before the vote. Translation: it’s a pickup basketball game where everyone’s cherry-picking and nobody’s playing defense.

But let’s get back to the AI doomsday material… because even Jerome Powell came out of his newly renovated Fed castle and admitted the U.S. is seeing “unusually large amounts of economic activity through the AI buildout.” This is just a word salad for: the whole damn economy is hooked on AI spending like it’s 1999 and everyone’s launching a dot-com.

Some economists, like Dean Baker, actually think the bubble popping could be good. Yeah, good. He compares the economy to a bathtub… which, right now, looks less like a neat little plumbing system and more like a frat house tub full of beer pong balls and regret. The “rich people faucet” (AI hype) is cranked to max, flooding the floorboards. Once that pressure drops, policymakers might finally have room to open the “ordinary workers” faucet with lower rates and social spending.

Of course, that’s assuming Congress doesn’t immediately fumble the wrench and flood the entire neighborhood while trying to fix the pipes.

But anyways, I can’t think of the last time someone went from $101B richer to $34B poorer in less time than it takes Zuck to botch his so called “superintelligence” AI glasses demo (too soon?).  Meanwhile, Elon’s back in the driver’s seat of the world’s richest bus… honking the horn, swerving across lanes, and probably tweeting while doing it.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Starbucks and Tesla as mentioned in the article.