‘AI changes everything,’ says the 81-year-old co-founder of software giant Oracle

But the stock market is fickle, and Musk was back on top by the end of the day, according to Bloomberg, as Oracle gave up a bit of its earlier gains.

For those keeping score, the difference now is a billion, which is not much given the size of the figures: Musk’s US$384.2 billion versus US$383.2 billion for Ellison.

The duelling fortunes are so big each could fund the lifestyles of 5 million typical US families for a year, about the entire population of Florida, allowing them to all quit their jobs. Or they could just tell all of South Africa to take a holiday for a year and produce nothing, based on its gross domestic product.

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