• Elon Musk is almost $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos and worth more than Costco.
• His net worth hit $447 billion after Tesla stock jumped and SpaceX's valuation rose to $350 billion.
• Just five years ago, Musk was worth about $25 billion, and Tesla was valued below $100 billion.

Elon Musk is nearly $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos, and personally worth more than Costco, after adding $63 billion to his fortune in a single day.

His net worth surged to $447 billion on Wednesday, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after Tesla stock jumped 6% and SpaceX's valuation leaped to $350 billion based on employee share sales.

Musk's fortune has ballooned by $218 billion this year — a sum that exceeds the net worth of every other person on the rich list except Amazon's Bezos ($249 billion) and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg ($224 billion).

Musk is now more than twice as wealthy as Oracle's Larry Ellison ($198 billion), and more than three times as rich as Warren Buffett ($144 billion).

His one-day gain — the largest in the index's history — rivals the total wealth of Binance cofounder Changpeng Zhao, ranked 23rd with a $63.2 billion fortune. It also helped to lift the combined wealth of the 500 richest people on the planet to above $10 trillion for the first time, Bloomberg said.

Musk is now worth more on paper than the vast majority of US public companies, including Costco ($442 billion), Home Depot ($419 billion), and Netflix ($400 billion).

His wealth is largely made up of his roughly 13% stake and some contested stock options in Tesla, and his 42% slice of SpaceX. Musk's other businesses include xAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and X Corp, formerly Twitter.

Tesla shares have surged more than 70% this year to $425 at Wednesday's close, valuing the company at nearly $1.4 trillion. That figure comfortably exceeds the roughly $1 trillion market value of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and approaches the $1.6 trillion value of Zuckerberg's Meta.

The electric vehicle maker's shares have soared as investors bet it will harness artificial intelligence in revolutionary products such as self-driving cars and humanoid robots.

Musk's prominent role in Donald Trump's campaign, and his emergence as a close advisor to the president-elect who's tasked him with streamlining the US government, have also fueled optimism around his companies.

SpaceX is now valued at $350 billion based on the latest price paid by the company and its backers to buy shares from employees, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The Starlink owner's valuation was previously $210 billion after a secondary share sale in June.

It's worth underscoring how dramatic Musk's wealth jump has been. He was worth less than $170 billion as recently as April, and only about $25 billion five years ago — around 1/18 of his net worth now.

Tesla was worth less than $100 billion during the Covid crash of 2020, or about 1/14 of its valuation today.

• Brendan Carr, Trump's pick to run the FCC, says he'll be scrutinizing broadcast TV companies, like CBS and NBC.
• What does that mean? Carr is vague.
• That vagueness may be the point: It could cause broadcast TV companies to think twice before running something Carr, or Trump, doesn't like.

The next Trump administration says it wants to get rid of regulations.

But not all regulations.

Brendan Carr, Trump's choice to head the Federal Communications Commission, says he plans to scrutinize broadcast TV operators to see if they are operating in "the public interest" — a requirement tied to the 1934 Communications Act. If they're not, he says, they could lose their license to use the public airwaves.

What exactly does that mean? Carr isn't super-specific. And Carr, who already is an FCC commissioner, didn't mention the issue when he wrote about the FCC for Project 2025, a conservative planning document Trump allies are using to help staff the next administration. But he has been talking about it quite a bit over the last few weeks.

Shortly after Trump nominated Carr to lead the FCC, Carr announced that the agency would "enforce this public interest obligation." He brought the idea up again in a Fox News interview shortly after. On Friday, he talked about it again, via a CNBC interview.

"Look, the law is very clear. The Communications Act says you have to operate in the public interest," he said. "And if you don't, yes, one of the consequences is potentially losing your license. And of course, that's on the table. I mean, look, broadcast licenses are not sacred cows."

Asked to clarify if he meant he was going to target broadcasters he thought were too liberal, Carr said that wasn't the case, and that he wasn't trying to rein in speech.

"At the end of the day, obviously there's a statutory provision that prevents the FCC from engaging in censorship. I don't want to be the speech police. But there is something that's different about broadcasters than, say, podcasters, where you have to operate in a public interest."

Then Carr argued that all he plans on doing is enforcing existing regulations.

"I'm just saying follow the law. I mean, this law has been on the books for a long time," he said. "It's not my decision to hold broadcasters to a public interest obligation. It's Congress. And if they don't like that, then they should go to Congress to change the law."

(It's worth noting the act applies only to companies with over-the-air broadcast operations, like CBS and NBC. But all four of the big broadcast networks are part of larger media outfits. In the case of CBS and NBC, that's Paramount and Comcast, respectively.)

You can see the whole thing here:

I've asked Carr and his office for comment and clarification about where he thinks broadcasters may have acted against the public interest.

But in the meantime, it's worth noting that he's already argued that CBS deserves scrutiny over the way its "60 Minutes" program handled an interview with Kamala Harris — which is also the center of a lawsuit Trump filed against CBS last month. And that Carr also complained about Harris making an appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" the weekend before the election.

Perhaps Carr has also criticized the way broadcasters have treated Harris or other Democrats. But I haven't seen or heard it.

All of which suggests that Carr may try using the power of his agency to affect the way broadcasters treat Trump and his allies. Even if he says that's not the case.

But none of this is super clear-cut. For instance: Carr has talked about bringing up Trump's "60 Minutes" complaint when Larry and David Ellison, who are trying to buy CBS owner Paramount, need approval to transfer the CBS broadcast license. But it's hard to imagine a Carr-led FCC actually holding up the Paramount deal, given that Larry Ellison is both a Trump supporter and good pals with Elon Musk, a Carr ally.

And it's also worth noting that Carr also has carrots available to help get broadcasters on board, in addition to sticks. Most notably: Lots of media owners are hoping that the next Trump administration will make it easier for them to consolidate, and Carr has repeatedly said he's in favor of that. So this could easily get muddy.

But all of it has the potential to cause media companies to think twice, or a third time, before airing something they think Donald Trump has a problem with. Is that what Brendan Carr wants?

• Larry Ellison plans to invest up to $165 million into research at the University of Oxford.
• The investment aims to transform research into products, focusing on key global challenges.
• The Ellison Institute of Technology is opening a campus in Oxford in 2027.

Larry Ellison is betting big on research and development in the UK by investing at least $127 million through his technology institute to help turn scientific discoveries at the University of Oxford into products.

The Ellison Institute of Technology, set up by the Oracle cofounder in 2015, plans to invest £130 million ($165 million) overall to fund joint research projects at the university in areas ranging from health to clean energy.

Ellison said in a press release that the joint venture's mission is to "have a global impact by fundamentally reimagining the way science and technology translate into end-to-end solutions for humanity's most challenging problems."

"This long-term, strategic partnership with the University of Oxford is at the heart of delivering on that goal," he added. "By collaborating on transformational, world-class research programs harnessing new technology and compute capability we will together deliver positive impact on society at scale."

The Oracle cofounder, now the world's fourth richest person, founded The Ellison Institute of Technology as a research and development center for healthcare.

The center announced plans to build a campus in Oxford in 2023, which is set to open in 2027. The $1.27 billion development will include labs, supercomputing facilities, and cancer research clinics.

The EIT will inject millions into joint research projects with the University of Oxford to dedicate to what Professor Irene Tracey, the university's vice-chancellor, described in a press release as "humanity's most pressing challenges."

The joint center's research will focus on EIT's four "Humane Endeavours": health and medical science, sustainable agriculture, clean energy, and government innovation in the age of AI.

Professor Sir John Bell, the president of EIT Oxford, said in a statement that the alliance "comes at an exciting time in the technological revolution."

"By combining world-class research with long-term capital investment and state-of-the-art facilities, we will tackle some of society's biggest challenges," he said. "Whether it's advancing new approaches for healthcare or solving the issues of food security, we will make progress using the brightest and most creative human minds available."

Bell told the FT the investment would also help secure the intellectual property rights of innovations that come out of the center and its researchers — something the science minister, Lord Patrick Vallance, told the outlet the UK had been falling behind on.

The deal also includes £30 million ($38 million) to provide scholarships to more than 100 undergraduate and postgraduate students, with the first intake starting in October 2025.

Ellison owns 40% of the business software company Oracle, and his net worth has more than doubled over the past two years to $181 billion.

He is in the process of purchasing Paramount for his son, David.

• Oracle shares are set for their best year since 1999 after a 75% surge.
• The enterprise-computing stock has benefited from strong demand for cloud and AI infrastructure.
• Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison's personal fortune has surged .

Oracle has surged 75% since January, putting the stock on track for its best year since a tripling in 1999 during the dot-com boom.

The enterprise-computing giant's share price has jumped from a low of about $60 in late 2022 to about $180, boosting Oracle's market value from below $165 billion to north of $500 billion.

It's now worth almost as much as Exxon Mobil ($518 billion), and more valuable than Mastercard ($489 billion), Costco ($431 billion), or Netflix ($379 billion).

Oracle's soaring stock price has boosted the net worth of Larry Ellison, who cofounded the company and is chief technology officer. His holding of more than 40% puts him second on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list worth $227 billion, second only to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's $330 billion.

Oracle provides all manner of software and hardware for businesses, but its cloud applications and infrastructure are fueling its growth as companies such as Tesla that are training large language models pay up for processing power.

The company was founded in 1977 but is still growing at a good clip. Net income jumped by 23% to $10.5 billion in the year ended May, fueled by 12% sales growth in the cloud services and license support division, which generated nearly 75% of its revenues.

Oracle signed the largest sales contracts in its history last year as it tapped into "enormous demand" for training LLMs, CEO Safra Catz said in the fourth-quarter earnings release. She said the client list included OpenAI and its flagship ChatGPT model, which kickstarted the AI boom.

Catz also predicted revenue growth would accelerate from 6% to double digits this financial year. That's partly because Oracle is working with Microsoft and Google to interconnect their respective clouds, which Ellison said would help to "turbocharge our cloud database growth."

Oracle has flown under the radar this year compared to Nvidia. The chipmaker's stock has tripled in the past year and it now rivals Apple as the world's most valuable company. Yet Oracle is still headed for its best annual stock performance in a quarter of a century — and its bosses are promising there's more to come.

• The world's 10 biggest wealth gainers have grown $790 billion richer in 2024.
• Elon Musk leads the list with a $257 billion gain that has boosted his net worth to $486 billion.
• Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Jensen Huang are all up more than $70 billion.

Ten people have grown their personal fortunes by a combined $790 billion this year — a figure larger than the market value of Walmart ($767 billion).

The biggest wealth gainers of 2024 include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The buzz around artificial intelligence, a solid outlook for the US economy, and market expectations about Donald Trump's second term in office have boosted their companies' stock prices, benefiting them as major shareholders.

Here are the 10 greatest wealth builders this year as of the market close on Tuesday, December 17.

1. Elon Musk

Year-to-date wealth gain: $257 billion

Net worth: $486 billion

Source of wealth gain: Tesla and SpaceX stock

Elon Musk is the CEO of automaker Tesla and spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX. He's also the owner of X, the social network previously known as Twitter, along with Neuralink, xAI, and The Boring Company.

Musk's $257 billion wealth gain this year exceeds the total net worth of Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person on the planet. The serial entrepreneur could soon become the first individual to amass a $500 billion fortune.

2. Mark Zuckerberg

Year-to-date wealth gain: $90.9 billion

Net worth: $219 billion

Source of wealth gain: Meta stock

Mark Zuckerberg is the cofounder and CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.

Meta stock has soared 75% this year as investors wager Zuckerberg's big bets on AI and the metaverse will pay off in the years ahead. Zuckerberg has added about $90 billion to his net worth as a result, propelling him into third place on Bloomberg's rich list.

3. Jeff Bezos

Year-to-date wealth gain: $72.9 billion

Net worth: $250 billion

Source of wealth gain: Amazon stock

Jeff Bezos is Amazon's founder, executive chairman, and former CEO.

Amazon shares have leaped 52% this year as investors bet the online retailer can harness AI to supercharge its sales and leverage Amazon Web Services to become a key provider of cloud infrastructure to AI companies.

4. Larry Ellison

Year-to-date wealth gain: $70.4 billion

Net worth: $193 billion

Source of wealth gain: Oracle and Tesla stock

Larry Ellison is the cofounder, executive chairman, and chief technology officer of Oracle, one of the largest enterprise software companies.

Oracle stock has jumped 61% this year as the company has emerged as a key provider of cloud data centers for AI businesses, fueling a $70 billion increase in Ellison's net worth.

Ellison purchased more than 1.5% of Tesla prior to joining its board in December 2018, making him the electric-vehicle maker's second-largest individual shareholder after Musk. He's believed to have retained his stake, now worth upward of $20 billion, since resigning as a director in 2022.

5. Jensen Huang

Year-to-date wealth gain: $70 billion

Net worth: $114 billion

Source of wealth gain: Nvidia stock

Jensen Huang is the founder and CEO of Nvidia, the graphics chip maker that has emerged as a critical seller of "picks and shovels" to the AI gold rush.

Nvidia's stock has surged 163% this year, making it one of the world's most valuable companies with a $3.2 trillion market value and lifting Huang's net worth by $70 billion.

6. Michael Dell

Year-to-date wealth gain: $48.9 billion

Net worth: $127 billion

Source of wealth gain: Dell Technologies stock

Michael Dell is the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, the maker of PCs, printers, and other computing equipment.

Dell shares have soared 55% this year as the company has shifted its focus toward AI-powered devices and servers.

7. Larry Page

Year-to-date wealth gain: $47.4 billion

Net worth: $174 billion

Source of wealth gain: Alphabet stock

Larry Page cofounded Google in 1998 and was the company's CEO until 2001 and again between 2011 and 2015 after Google was restructured as a subsidiary of Alphabet.

Alphabet shares have surged 40% this year as investors wager the search-and-advertising titan can dominate AI. The stock jump has fueled a $47 billion rise in Page's net worth.

8. Jim Walton

Year-to-date wealth gain: $45.1 billion

Net worth: $118 billion

Source of wealth gain: Walmart stock

Jim Walton is the youngest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton and, like his siblings, one of the retailer's largest shareholders with an 11%-plus stake.

Walmart stock has climbed 82% this year, fueled by resilient consumer spending in the face of historic inflation and soaring interest rates in recent years. The surge led to Walton amassing a $100 billion fortune for the first time in September.

9. Alice Walton

Year-to-date wealth gain: $44.4 billion

Net worth: $114 billion

Source of wealth gain: Walmart stock

Alice Walton is the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton.

She overtook L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers in August to become the world's richest woman.

10. Rob Walton

Year-to-date wealth gain: $43.8 billion

Net worth: $115 billion

Source of wealth gain: Walmart stock

Rob Walton is the eldest son of Sam Walton and an heir to the Walmart fortune.

He and his siblings owe a big chunk of their wealth to their father, who handed them each a 20% stake in the family business over 70 years ago instead of having them inherit his fortune upon his death, in turn avoiding paying billions of dollars in estate taxes.