NEW YORK (AP) — The battle among billionaires for bragging rights as the world’s richest person got heated Wednesday with the surprising surge of an old contender: Larry Ellison.

In a stunning few minutes after markets opened, stock in Ellison’s Oracle Corp. rocketed more than a third, enough for him to temporarily wrest the title from its longtime holder Elon Musk and hand it to the software giant’s co-founder.

But the stock market is fickle, and Musk was back on top by the end of the day, at least according to Bloomberg, as Oracle gave up a bit of its earlier gains.

For those keeping score, the difference now is a billion, which isn’t much given the size of the figures: Musk’s $384.2 billion versus $383.2 billion for Ellison.

The dueling fortunes are so big each could fund the lifestyles of 5 million typical American families for a year, about the entire population of Florida, allowing them to all quit their jobs. Or they could just tell all of South Africa to take a vacation for year and produce nothing, based on its gross domestic product.

The brief switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle powered by multibillion dollar orders from customers as the artificial-intelligence race heats up.

Musk became the world’s richest person for the first time four years ago. A big reason is his stake in a hot, but now cooling, electric car maker, Tesla.

Stock in the company has been moving in the opposite direction of Oracle’s, dropping 14% so far this year. Musk also controls several private companies, including rocket maker SpaceX, his artificial intelligence company xAI and the former Twitter, now called X.

Ellison owns about 40% of Oracle, which means its surging stock added $100 billion to his net worth in little over a half-hour after the stock market opened.

The night before after trading had closed the company announced in an earnings report that it had struck more than $300 billion worth of new deals, including contracts with the OpenAI, Meta, Nvidia and Musk’s xAI. It said that it now expects revenue from its cloud infrastructure business to jump 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year. then rise to $144 billion in four years after that.

Ellison said in an earnings call that Oracle would not just be making money from its computing centers that help build the next chatbots, but from the day-to-day running of those AI systems to run robots in factories, design drugs in laboratories, place bets in financial markets and automate legal and sales work at companies.

In other words, Ellison’s surge in wealth Wednesday morning reflected investor expectations that computers will take over many jobs now done by humans — and Oracle will benefit.

Or as the 81 year old said on the call, “AI Changes Everything.”

Musk is hoping the same for Tesla and his own net worth, but he’s been struggling to convince investors.

The company had been promising a big turnaround in electric car sales after they fell sharply earlier this year, but the bounce back hasn’t happened. Musk has been downplaying the bad numbers by trying to shift investors’ focus to Tesla’s other business of making robots and advances in the artificial intelligence behind its cars and robotaxis.

While he keeps talking up the Tesla future, though, the bad news keeps coming.

Tesla sales in the European Union plunged 40% earlier this summer, the seventh month in row of drops, as customers balked at buying his cars after he took to X to support extreme right-wing politicians there. The company has been losing market share in the U.S., too, as buyers angry with his embrace of Donald Trump have stayed away from Tesla showrooms.

Oracle stock closed Wednesday at $328.33, a 36% jump. Tesla was up less than 1% at $347.79.

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AP writers Matt O’Brien in Providence, R.I., and Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this story.

Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the green light for a transgender boy to continue using the restroom at his South Carolina school that corresponds with his gender identity while his legal challenge to a state ban continues.

The court declined a request from South Carolina officials to freeze a federal appeals court decision that blocked enforcement of its policy on transgender students’ restroom use solely against the ninth-grader, identified in court papers as John Doe. The state conditions funding on a school’s compliance with a rule prohibiting transgender students from using the facilities that align with their gender identity.

In an unsigned order, the court said its denial is “not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation. Rather, it is based on the standards applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court.” Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have granted South Carolina’s request.

“Today’s decision from the Supreme Court reaffirms what we all know to be true: Contrary to South Carolina’s insistence, trans students are not emergencies. They are not threats. They are young people looking to learn and grow at school, despite the state-mandated hostility they too often face,” Alexandra Brodsky, litigation director for Public Justice’s Students’ Civil Rights Project, which is representing the student, said in a statement. “We are so thrilled that our client will continue to be able to use boys’ restrooms while his appeal continues, and hope today’s decision will provide hope to other trans students and their families during these difficult times.”

The restriction was first included by South Carolina’s General Assembly in a spending bill for fiscal year 2024 to 2025. State lawmakers renewed the ban in its latest spending measure for the new fiscal year, and it took effect July 1.

Last November, Doe, a transgender student who was enrolled at a public school in Berkeley County, South Carolina, and his parents filed a lawsuit alleging that the state’s restroom policy violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and Title IX.

But this summer, after the Supreme Court in June upheld a Tennessee law restricting access to gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, a South Carolina district court paused Doe’s case and denied a request from Doe to block the measure while litigation continues. The judge’s order also came after the Supreme Court said it will consider in its next term, which starts in October, whether states can prohibit transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s athletics teams.

Doe appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, and last month, the court granted an injunction as to Doe. The 4th Circuit blocked South Carolina and its Department of Education from enforcing compliance with its policy forbidding transgender students from using restrooms that correspond with their gender identities, but only as applied to Doe.

The 4th Circuit cited in its ruling its 2020 decision in a case brought by Gavin Grimm, a transgender student who challenged his school’s restroom policy. The appeals court found that his Virginia school board’s policy requiring transgender students to use restrooms that correspond with their biological sex was unlawful.

Grimm’s case had been before the Supreme Court in 2017, but the court sent the dispute back to the lower courts. Then, in 2021, the high court declined to take up the case for a second time, leaving the 4th Circuit ruling in Grimm’s favor in place.

In blocking enforcement of South Carolina’s policy against John Doe, the 4th Circuit said that its decision in Grimm’s case “remains the law of this Circuit and is thus binding on all the district courts within it.”

HOUSTON (AP) — A professor at Texas A&M University was fired and others were removed from their positions after a video surfaced in which a student confronted the instructor over her teaching of issues related to gender identity in a class on children’s literature.

The firing of Melissa McCoul, a senior lecturer in the English department with over a decade of teaching experience, came after political pressure from Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who had called for her termination.

The incident prompted Glenn Hegar, the chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, to order an audit of courses at all 12 schools in the system.

“It is unacceptable for A&M System faculty to push a personal political agenda,” Hegar said in a statement on Monday. “We have been tasked with training the next generation of teachers and childcare professionals. That responsibility should prioritize protecting children not engaging in indoctrination.”

In an email, McCoul referred all questions to her attorney, Amanda Reichek. Reichek said in a statement that McCoul has appealed her termination and “is exploring further legal action.”

“Dr. McCoul was fired in derogation of her constitutional rights and the academic freedom that was once the hallmark of higher education in Texas,” Reichek said.

Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III said in a statement Tuesday he directed the campus provost to fire McCoul after learning the instructor had continued teaching content in a children’s literature course “that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course.”

Welsh said the issue had been raised earlier this summer and he had “made it clear to our academic leadership that course content must match catalog descriptions for each and every one of our course sections.” Welsh said he learned on Monday that this was not taking place.

“This isn’t about academic freedom; it’s about academic responsibility,” Welsh said.

In her statement, Reichek pushed back on Welsh’s claims that McCoul’s teaching did not match the course description.

“Professor McCoul’s course content was entirely consistent with the catalog and course description, and she was never instructed to change her course content in any way, shape, or form,” Reichek said. “In fact, Dr. McCoul taught this course and others like it for many years, successfully and without challenge.”

Welsh also ordered the removal of the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the head of the English Department from their administrative positions.

The actions by Texas A&M were criticized by faculty and writers’ groups.

“We are witnessing the death of academic freedom in Texas, the remaking of universities as tools of authoritarianism that suppress free thought,” Jonathan Friedman, Sy Syms Managing Director of U.S. Free Expression Programs at PEN America, said in a statement.

The Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors said what happened at Texas A&M University should concern every Texan.

“Not only has the integrity of academic freedom come under fire, but the due process rights of a faculty member have been trampled at the urging of state politicians + the governor himself,” the group said in a statement.

The controversy began on Monday after Republican state Rep. Brian Harrison posted a video, audio recordings and other materials on a thread on the social media site X. Harrison called for the professor and Welsh to be fired for “DEI and LGBTQ indoctrination.”

In one video, a female student and the professor can be heard arguing over gender identity being taught in a children’s literature class. The student and professor are not shown and it’s unclear when the video was taken.

“This also very much goes against not only myself but a lot of people’s religious beliefs. And so I am not going to participate in this because it’s not legal and I don’t want to promote something that is against our president’s laws as well as against my religious beliefs,” the student could be heard saying in the video.

“If you are uncomfortable in this class you do have the right to leave. What we are doing is not illegal,” the professor said.

In her back-and-forth with the professor, the student mentioned an executive order that President Donald Trump signed earlier this year in which he said “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.”

A Texas law took effect on Sept. 1 that forbids Texas K-12 schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity. The law does not apply to universities and other institutions of higher education.

Texas A&M is located in College Station, about 95 miles (153 kilometers) northwest of Houston.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://x.com/juanlozano70