You may not have heard of Larry Ellison's name, but last night he quietly rewritten Wall Street history - the 81-year-old Oracle founder, relying on the miracle of a 36% stock price soaring 36% in a single day, completed the "instant kill" of Musk on the rich list. All this comes from an AI agreement comparable to a science fiction blockbuster: Oracle and OpenAI signed a $300 billion computing power contract, which is equivalent to buying the entire Tesla company and buying half of Tencent!
1. Wall Street's crazy September: How did a digital torrent sweep away 300 billion?
On September 10, traders on the New York Stock Exchange watched Oracle's stock price surge like a rocket. Millions of shares change hands every second, eventually setting an epic record of a single-day market value growth of $300 billion - a figure that even exceeds the annual GDP of 163 countries!
The source of this capital carnival is actually a seemingly boring technical agreement: in the next five years, OpenAI will hand over almost all the computing power needs to Oracle's cloud servers. This means that from ChatGPT to autonomous driving, the "digital brain" of all AI giants will run on Ellison's machines. Some analysts bluntly said: "This is equivalent to seizing the oil pipeline in the AI era, and he has to pay a toll for every drop of digital crude oil."
2. The counterattack of the rebellious old cannon: from dropping out of college to the throne of richest man
Compared with good Silicon Valley babies like Zuckerberg, Ellison is simply a "barbarian" in the technology industry. This Chicago boy, who was once abandoned by his biological mother, was still working on odd jobs when he was 32 years old until he founded Oracle for $2,000 in 1977.
His life is filled with private fighter jets, Hawaii Island acquisitions and America's Cup Reigns Champions. At the age of 81, he still works 12 hours a day and is crazy about diss Bezos and Musk on social media. The most dramatic thing about this shocking counterattack is that when he reached the top, he was practicing yoga in a 16th-century Japanese palace, and after learning the news, he only said: "Tomorrow Musk will not be able to sleep."
III. The shadow empire of mysterious Chinese women
When the media frantically pursued the new richest man, an overlooked key figure emerged - Ellison's Chinese wife Melanie Craft. This former romantic novelist has been away from the public for 20 years, but has been deeply involved in her husband's business decisions.
Insiders revealed that Melanie is not only the key link between Ellison and the Asian market, but also the driving force behind Oracle's AI strategy. The "Dragon Vein Project" she led began to deploy in the East Asian computing power market five years ago. In this cooperation with OpenAI, it was she who helped Oracle win more favorable terms than Amazon. Some analysts lamented: "When Bezos was still dividing his shares in the divorce agreement, Ellison had already opened a husband-and-wife store into a technology giant."
Behind this capital carnival, there are three terrifying truths
1. The era of hegemony in computing power is officially coming. When US$300 billion is just to purchase "computing power", it means that the value measurement standard of human civilization has changed. In the past, oil was industrial blood, but now data was digital blood, and computing power was the heart. What’s scary is that this heart is controlled by a very small number of companies, and there may be “computing power colonization” in the future – developing countries will never be able to catch up with the AI wave.
2. The cruel reality of the elderly dominating the technology world. Ellison became the richest man at the age of 81, Musk was 54, and Bezos was 60-tech giants are turning into elderly clubs. The disruptive technologies created by young people were eventually harvested by old giants with capital. When a 24-year-old genius developed an algorithm to change the world, he found that the server rent was paid to an 80-year-old man. What kind of black humor is this?
3. Chinese think tanks are reshaping power in Silicon Valley From Huang Renxun to Melanie Craft, Chinese elites are no longer just technical executors, but strategic decision makers. This not only proves the global value of Chinese wisdom, but also implies that technological competition will be more complicated in the future - maybe one day you will find that the dominant leader of the technology war between China and the United States was actually a classmate of Tsinghua University.
Cold thoughts behind the feast
This $300 billion carnival is not only a reward for Ellison's courage to bet and win, but also the biggest warning signal of the AI bubble. When a company's single-day market value grows beyond the annual output value of certain industries, when computing power prices may soar tenfold in the next five years - are we creating a new digital divide?
It is worth pondering: If the future of AI is controlled by a few computing power oligarchs, will human beings become from "data proletariat" to "smart slaves"? When you cheer for ChatGPT's witty words, have you ever thought that every answer is contributing to the throne of other people's richest man?
Controversial Topic Discussion Do you think computing resources should become public infrastructure like water and electricity, or should they continue to be controlled by private giants? Welcome to leave your opinions in the comment section!
