Alphabet’s stock surge pushes Larry Page to second place among the world’s richest

Larry Page

A sharp rise in Alphabet’s share price has reordered the global rich list, with Larry Page now ranked second worldwide and Sergey Brin overtaking Jeff Bezos. Strong investor confidence in Alphabet’s AI and cloud strategy has driven a significant jump in the founders’ net worth.

Alphabet’s rapid climb in market value has caused a major reshuffle in the global billionaire rankings. Google co-founder Larry Page has moved into the second spot worldwide after surpassing Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, according to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List. Sergey Brin has also advanced, overtaking Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as Alphabet’s rising valuation lifts the wealth of its earliest stakeholders.

On Monday, November 24, Page’s net worth rose by $8.7 billion as optimism around Alphabet’s AI and cloud performance pushed the company’s stock higher. His total wealth now stands at an estimated $264.9 billion. Ellison, whose net worth has dropped to $247.4 billion due to a fall in Oracle’s share price, has slipped behind Page. Brin’s fortune has risen to $245.6 billion, putting him just ahead of Bezos, who is estimated at $241.5 billion.

1. Elon Musk- $476.4B
2. Larry Page- $264.9B
3. Larry Ellison- $247.4B
4. Sergey Brin- $245.6B
5. Jeff Bezos- $241.5B

The reason behind Page’s lead over Brin lies in the distribution of Alphabet’s Class B shares. Although both founders jointly hold 87.9 percent of this high-voting stock, Page owns a larger portion: around 389 million shares compared with Brin’s 362.7 million. Forbes attributes the gap to Brin’s extensive charitable activity, which has reduced his holdings over time. Brin has donated Alphabet and Tesla shares to a range of nonprofit organisations and Parkinson’s research. He gave away $700 million earlier this year and made donations of $615 million and $600 million in 2023.

Alphabet’s market capitalisation is now approaching $4 trillion, having crossed the $3 trillion mark in September. The company’s recent legal win in the Google Chrome case, coupled with advances such as Google Gemini 3.0 and the Nano Banana Pro AI image generation model, has lifted investor confidence. Reports that Meta is in talks with Google to use its Tensor Processing Units for AI model training added further momentum, increasing the company’s valuation by an estimated $250 billion in a single day.