Sri Lanka, Sept. 11 -- Elon Musk briefly lost his title as the world's richest person to Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle and an ally of US President Donald Trump.

Ellison's wealth surged to $393bn (£290bn) on Wednesday morning, surpassing Musk's $385bn (£284bn), according to the Forbes billionaire list.

The jump came after shares in Oracle, which make up a significant part of Ellison's fortune, soared more than 40%, boosted by the database software company's surprisingly rosy outlook for its cloud infrastructure business and artificial intelligence (AI) deals.

But the firm's share price had shed some of those gains by the end of the day, putting Musk back on top.

Before briefly losing it to Ellison, Musk had held the...