Some days it just doesn't pay to be a billionaire.
So, there's this list called the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is a daily ranking of the people with the biggest wallets in the known universe.
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Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is currently sitting in the top spot -- big surprise, right? -- with $231 billion to his name.
He's followed by Bernard Arnault, CEO of the luxury group LVMH with $194 billion, and Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos in third place with $151 billion
Bill Gates was the next one of the list, and it was hardly surprising.
A few months ago, the founder of Microsoft (MSFT) saw his net worth jump by another $2 billion as shares of Microsoft rallied on April 26.
Just the day before Microsoft had posted stronger-than-expected third quarter earnings.
The company also reported less of a slowdown in growth in its cloud computing division, Azure, compared with analysts' predictions.
Batting Cleanup
Yeah, things were going pretty well for old Trey -- Gates' childhood nickname -- sitting there in the No. 4 position -- that is until some upstart by the name of Larry Ellison decided to play leapfrog.
Ellison, co-former and former CEO of Oracle (ORCL), had the gall, the temerity, the bare-faced audacity to muscle in on Gates' spot on the billionaires list and take Trey down a notch to No.5.
Tres impoli!
This was the first time Ellison has ever beaten Gates on the big bucks checklist and ranked above No. 5 on the list, Bloomberg reported.
Both men officially had a total net worth of $130 billion as of June 14, but Ellison, an avid yachtsman who was nicknamed "The Shark" in the Eighties, was still rated above Gates.
How did he do it? Well, with money, of course...a whole bunch of it, actually.
Oracle has been doing rather well this year, and Ellison is its largest stockholder.
The software company posted stronger-than-expected fiscal-fourth-quarter earnings on June 12, as double-digit sales growth in its cloud-services division helped power full-year revenue to a record $50 billion.
Oracle, which earns the bulk of its revenue from cloud services and license support, topped Wall Street earnings forecasts by 9 cents with an adjusted second bottom line of $1.67 per share.
Scoring Big With AI
Revenue added 16.6% to $13.8 billion, again topping analysts' estimates of a $13.73 billion tally.
Oracle accelerated its earnings potential last year with the $28 billion purchase of Cerner (CERN), the second-largest designer of software used by doctors and hospitals to manage and store medical records.
The company is set to become one of the early beneficiaries of the buildout in AI spending following a partnership with chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) it inked in March.
But Gates isn't the only billionaire to be skunked by Ellison.
The Shark also put the bite on Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), who now occupies the sixth position with $118 billion and Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who was way down in 10th place with only $98.9 billion in the bank.
Meanwhile, Gates is set to meet President Xi Jinping Friday during his visit to China, Reuters reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
The meeting will mark Xi's first meeting with a foreign private entrepreneur in recent years.
The sources did not say what the two might discuss, but let’s hope The Shark’s name doesn’t come up.
