A Tale of Two Billionaires

For a little while, Elon Musk was displaced as the richest man in the world this week, the crown going to Larry Ellison, who is not nearly as well-known to the public. So also the company he founded, Oracle, whose sudden steep share price jump saw him valued at US$393 billion. Musk has regained the top spot, but the margin remains slim, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which also tells us that Ellison’s net worth went up by a whopping US$191 billion in 2025.  

The two are strikingly different. Musk builds businesses based on technologies that will define the future. Oracle does boring back-room database management for the biggest companies in the world, and has gradually brought cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence into its ambit. It is not exactly like going to Mars, but its clients, most of the Fortune 500 companies, are so dependent that they rarely move out of its embrace. Musk is a flamboyant personality but abstemious when it comes to the trappings of wealth—he sold off all his homes at one point. Ellison owns an island. Musk loves being in the centre of the public eye, Ellison is a near-recluse. He is also 81 years old, and people like Steve Jobs once counted him as a mentor. Musk, at 54, is younger, but how they view life and wealth has nothing to do with age.  

Which one of the two would you want to model on? If you are a high-stakes risk taker with grand ambitions, then it would be Musk. But the empire is always shaky because Musk is always taking a gamble with something new. Ellison stands for stability and the unglamorous grind that eventually earns big rewards. The Musk approach is a recipe for disaster for anyone not as gifted, and most probably you are not. The Ellison way is not guaranteed to make you a billionaire either because he too is extraordinarily driven. But the approach—to take a good idea and make something special out of it over time with incremental refinements—is easier to emulate, plus the chances of wanton ruin are less. 

ambitionbillionairesbusinessElon MuskLarry Ellison