Updated: November 27, 2025
The “Google guys” are back on top of the global rich list.
A furious rally in Alphabet’s share price, powered by investor excitement around artificial intelligence, has pushed Google co‑founder Larry Page into the position of world’s second‑richest person, while co‑founder Sergey Brin has surged into the top tier and is trading places with Oracle founder Larry Ellison for the No.3 spot. At the same time, a sharp slump in Oracle stock has erased tens of billions from Ellison’s fortune in just weeks. [1]
Here’s how today’s billionaire rankings look, why they’re changing so fast, and what it says about the AI economy.
The new billionaire leaderboard as of November 27, 2025
According to the Forbes Real‑Time Billionaires list, as summarised by The Indian Express on Thursday, the top of the global rich list now looks like this: [2]
- Elon Musk – about $480.5 billion (Tesla, SpaceX, xAI)
- Larry Page – about $262.2 billion (Google / Alphabet)
- Larry Ellison – about $256.4 billion (Oracle)
- Sergey Brin – about $243.1 billion (Google / Alphabet)
- Jeff Bezos – about $241.0 billion (Amazon)
- Mark Zuckerberg – about $217.4 billion (Meta)
- Bernard Arnault – about $186.3 billion (LVMH)
- Jensen Huang – about $156.6 billion (Nvidia / semiconductors)
- Warren Buffett – about $151.5 billion (Berkshire Hathaway)
- Michael Dell – about $151.1 billion (Dell Technologies)
All figures are estimates and change with every tick of the market, but one thing is clear: Alphabet’s founders have never been this high, this fast.
Alphabet’s AI surge catapults Google’s founders up the rich list
Over just a few trading sessions, Alphabet’s soaring stock has re‑written the billionaire rankings.
- The Times of India reports that Alphabet’s sudden share‑price spike pushed Larry Page past Oracle’s Larry Ellison to become the world’s No.2 richest person, while Sergey Brin moved ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. [3]
- On Monday, November 24, Page’s net worth jumped by around $8.7 billion in a single day, taking his fortune to roughly $265 billion, while Brin climbed to about $246 billion, according to that same report. [4]
A separate analysis from The Financial Express notes that Alphabet’s share price has rallied more than 60% from its August lows, fuelled by: [5]
- the launch of Google’s Gemini 3 AI model,
- a blockbuster quarter where Google Cloud revenue jumped more than 30%, and
- news that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway quietly built a nearly $5 billion stake in Alphabet.
Alphabet also scored a major legal win in its Chrome antitrust case and is now edging toward a $4 trillion market capitalisation, after having crossed the $3 trillion line in September. [6]
In practical terms, every percentage point move in Alphabet’s stock now adds or erases billions of dollars from Page and Brin’s fortunes.
Sergey Brin vs Larry Ellison: the fight for the No.3 spot
The battle for third place has been particularly volatile this week.
- A November 27 explainer from SSBCrack News says that after a fresh 2.2% pop in Alphabet shares and another slide in Oracle, Sergey Brin’s wealth was recently estimated around $245.3 billion, nudging him ahead of Ellison, whose fortune fell to roughly $239.7 billion. [7]
- That piece notes that in just two trading sessions, Page added about $18.3 billion and Brin around $16.9 billion to their net worth, underscoring how tightly billionaire rankings are now coupled to AI sentiment. [8]
But the picture changes almost daily:
- Forbes’ paywalled coverage, echoed in social posts and summaries, indicated that Brin briefly reached No.3 in the world, with both Google co‑founders sitting at No.2 and No.3 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index earlier this week. [9]
- A newer Forbes piece from November 26 (also paywalled, but summarised in headlines) then said Larry Ellison had retaken the No.3 spot from Brin amid renewed AI‑stock turbulence. [10]
By Thursday’s tally in The Indian Express, Ellison is again listed in third place with a small lead over Brin. [11]
Bottom line: throughout late November, Page is firmly No.2, while Brin and Ellison are swapping places for No.3 and No.4 depending on the hour and the index.
Oracle’s AI roller‑coaster wipes out $130 billion of Ellison’s gains
To understand why Ellison is slipping down the ranks, you have to rewind to September.
Back then, Oracle was the AI market’s new darling. On September 10, Oracle shares jumped 36% in a single session after the company reported booming demand for its cloud infrastructure from AI customers like OpenAI. That one‑day surge added almost $89 billion to Ellison’s fortune – the largest daily wealth increase ever recorded by Bloomberg’s index. [12]
But what the market giveth, the market taketh away:
- By late November, Oracle’s stock had fallen about 39% from its all‑time high, logging six straight weeks of declines. [13]
- The reversal has wiped roughly $130 billion off Ellison’s net worth, dropping him behind Page and leaving him in a dogfight with Brin for third place. [14]
Bloomberg‑sourced reports carried by NDTV Profit and The Business Times highlight several worries that cooled investor enthusiasm: [15]
- Oracle’s aggressive AI build‑out relies heavily on debt, including plans for a $38 billion bond sale on top of nearly $100 billion in net adjusted debt.
- The company’s AI roadmap is deeply tied to OpenAI, with Oracle counting on “hundreds of billions” in future revenue from its data‑centre deals – far more than OpenAI is generating today.
In other words, Ellison’s AI bet is enormous, but also high‑risk and highly leveraged. When investors started questioning how sustainable the AI boom really is, Oracle became one of the first big casualties.
Why Larry Page is richer than Sergey Brin
Given that Page and Brin built Google together, many readers wonder why there’s a gap of roughly $15–20 billion between their net worths.
Two key factors explain it:
- Different shareholdings
- Page and Brin together control about 87.9% of Alphabet’s super‑voting Class B shares, which carry 10 votes each.
- However, Page owns around 389 million of these shares, while Brin holds about 362.7 million, according to SEC filings cited by both The Times of India and The Financial Express. [16]
- Brin’s philanthropy and share sales
- Brin has steadily sold or donated more stock over the years, particularly to fund medical research and nonprofit causes.
- Reports note that he has given away hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Alphabet and Tesla shares, including about $700 million earlier this year, plus sizable donations in 2021 and 2023. [17]
- Page, by contrast, has sold comparatively little in recent years; his last significant share sale was in 2022. [18]
So while Brin’s influence at Alphabet remains enormous, his more aggressive philanthropy and slightly smaller stake leave him a little behind Page on paper – at least for now.
AI is turning $200 billion into the new $100 billion
One striking trend in 2025 is how many tech founders now sit well above the $200 billion mark.
An earlier piece in The Economic Times pointed out that in the AI era, $200 billion has effectively become the new $100 billion, with Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Page and Brin all crossing that threshold at various points this year. [19]
Today’s data reinforces that idea:
- Musk is closing in on $500 billion, with some analysts speculating he could become the world’s first trillionaire within a few years if Tesla and xAI hit their growth targets. [20]
- Page, Ellison and Brin are all hovering in the $240–265 billion range. [21]
These are numbers that would have been unimaginable even a decade ago—and they’re being powered less by traditional industries and more by cloud infrastructure, AI models, and data‑centre hardware.
The AI arms race behind Alphabet vs Oracle
Alphabet and Oracle are effectively competing on different layers of the AI stack:
- Alphabet (Google)
- Builds and deploys foundation models like Gemini 3 and related products (Gmail, Search, YouTube, Workspace) that directly touch billions of users.
- Runs a huge cloud and TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) business; reports say Meta has explored using Google’s AI chips for its own data centres, which helped spark the latest rally in Alphabet shares. [22]
- Oracle
- Focuses on AI‑adjacent cloud infrastructure, selling GPU‑heavy data‑centre capacity to firms like OpenAI and Nvidia’s partners. [23]
- Ellison has pitched training AI models as “the largest and fastest‑growing business in history,” but investors are now questioning how much of the hype will actually translate into long‑term profits. [24]
Right now, markets appear to be rewarding Alphabet’s diversified AI story—spanning search, cloud, ads, and consumer products—more than Oracle’s narrower, leveraged infrastructure bet.
What today’s reshuffle means
For everyday investors and tech watchers, the reshuffling of the rich list is about more than bragging rights among billionaires:
- AI winners and losers are separating quickly
The swing from Ellison briefly challenging Musk’s crown in September to now sitting behind Page (and sometimes Brin) is a reminder of how fast narratives can flip in AI. [25] - Concentration of wealth is accelerating
With over 3,000 billionaires globally and a combined net worth of about $16.1 trillion, the top 10 alone control an outsized share of that wealth—and most of them are tech founders riding the AI wave. [26] - Volatility is the new normal
A single product launch (Gemini 3), a court ruling, or a bond‑market scare can add or erase tens of billions of dollars from individual fortunes overnight. The rankings you see this morning may not hold by the closing bell. - Philanthropy and governance will face new pressure
With Page, Brin and Ellison all sitting on quarter‑trillion‑dollar fortunes, questions around tax policy, regulation of AI, and large‑scale philanthropy are only going to get louder.
For now, though, the story of November 27, 2025 is clear:
- Elon Musk still dominates the global rich list.
- Larry Page has firmly claimed the world’s No.2 spot, thanks to Alphabet’s AI‑fuelled surge.
- Sergey Brin and Larry Ellison are locked in a neck‑and‑neck contest for No.3, with their fortunes rising and falling on every twist in the AI arms race.
And if recent weeks are any guide, this league table is far from settled.
References
1. indianexpress.com, 2. indianexpress.com, 3. timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 4. timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 5. www.financialexpress.com, 6. timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 7. news.ssbcrack.com, 8. news.ssbcrack.com, 9. www.forbes.com, 10. www.forbes.com, 11. indianexpress.com, 12. www.businesstimes.com.sg, 13. www.businesstimes.com.sg, 14. www.ndtvprofit.com, 15. www.businesstimes.com.sg, 16. timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 17. timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 18. www.financialexpress.com, 19. m.economictimes.com, 20. indianexpress.com, 21. indianexpress.com, 22. news.ssbcrack.com, 23. www.businesstimes.com.sg, 24. www.businesstimes.com.sg, 25. www.businesstimes.com.sg, 26. indianexpress.com
