Did Elon Musk Lose the Title of World’s Richest Person?

The battle of the billionaires is getting confusing, depending on which financial scoreboard you’re looking at. According to Bloomberg, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison just leapfrogged Elon Musk to claim the title of the world’s richest person. They estimated Ellison’s fortune at a staggering $393 billion, while Musk’s sat slightly behind at $385 billion.

But wait—Forbes isn’t buying it. Their real-time billionaires list still has Musk comfortably in first place, pegging his net worth at around $439 billion. In their tally, Ellison doesn’t come close to knocking him off the top spot.

So who’s right?

The short answer is that billionaire rankings can change depending on how you calculate wealth. Bloomberg and Forbes use different methods, tracking fluctuating stock prices, private holdings, and other assets in real time. Since so much of Musk’s wealth is tied to Tesla stock, even small changes on Wall Street can cause his net worth to bounce up or down by billions in a single day. Ellison’s fortune, meanwhile, is more tied to Oracle’s steady climb in value.

By the end of the day yesterday, Bloomberg’s real-time list had Musk back on top, with Ellison settling at $383 billion.

The takeaway?

Both Ellison and Musk are still living in a financial stratosphere that the rest of us can’t even see with binoculars. Whether Musk is worth $385 billion or $439 billion, he’s not exactly clipping coupons. And Ellison, who’s been quietly stacking his fortune for decades, is suddenly in the spotlight as Silicon Valley’s heir apparent—at least according to one scoreboard.