💵 Larry Page Just Became The 2nd Richest Person In The World

In today’s newsletter I discuss how Larry Page just became the second richest person in the world, “The Big Short” Michael Burry thinks Tesla and AI stocks are overvalued, you can buy a palazzo in Biella, Italy for $160,000 dollars,
“Zootopia 2” becomes the highest worldwide debut for an animated film, Michael Dell donates $6.25 billion dollars to 25 million children’s 'Trump Accounts', Switzerland votes against inheritance tax initiative, OpenAI invests in Thrive Holding’s AI startups and holdings, NASA has found tryptophan on an astroid, and MLS viewership is up big time this year.

Let’s get into it!

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💵 Larry Page Just Became The 2nd Richest Person In The World

Larry Page has just passed Larry Ellison to become the world’s second-richest person on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List, thanks in large part due to the increase in the stock price of Alphabet, Google’s parent company of which Larry Page is a co-founder of alongside his friend Sergey Brin, who sits at number five on Forbes’ list. Larry Page officially surpassed the net worth of Oracle founder Larry Ellison in early December to secure the number two spot on the global wealth list. The only other individual who remains ahead of Larry Page is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose personal fortune currently commands a net worth of roughly $489.9.4 billion dollars. Larry Page’s significant financial jump is the direct result of a massive and sustained rally in Alphabet’s shares, which have been heavily driven by investor enthusiasm for the company’s aggressive focus on artificial intelligence and its rapidly expanding cloud infrastructure development. This market momentum gained particular strength following Alphabet’s strong Q3 reporting, which included a remarkable 34% boost in cloud revenue. This success has propelled the parent company of Google to surpass $100 billion dollars in quarterly revenue for the first time ever. The financial markets did what they do, and have rewarded Alphabet's stock by surging by more than 86.6% in the last year.

Larry Page’s current staggering net worth reflects his influence in the tech world, where he’s been regarded as a visionary ever since he co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998 while they were doctoral students at Stanford University. With the skyrocketing stock price of Alphabet, Larry Page’s estimated net worth has surged to an unprecedented $264.9 billion dollars. This immense personal fortune recently overtook the estimated $247.4 billion dollars held by Larry Ellison, whose wealth has been more volatile due to recent declines in Oracle’s stock price. To put Larry Page's wealth into perspective, his personal net worth is greater than the Gross Domestic Product of entire nations such as Hungary, which has an approximate GDP of $203.83 billion dollars. 

The sheer speed of Larry Page’s wealth accumulation is evident in the single-day gain of $4.5 billion dollars on Wednesday, December 3 when he saw when Alphabet's shares climbed by 1.7%, trading at approximately $321.24 dollars per share. This monumental stock performance has pushed Alphabet’s market capitalization to an astounding $3.8 trillion dollars, with the company now aggressively targeting a $4 trillion dollars valuation.

Alphabet's market capitalization experienced a colossal increase of approximately $1.435 trillion between December 2, 2024, and December 2, 2025, surging from around $2.365 trillion to $3.86 trillion dollars as of today. This explosive growth was almost entirely driven by investor confidence in the company's aggressive and successful pivot to Artificial Intelligence, with the market rewarding the strong performance of its Gemini 3 AI models and the strategic integration of AI into its core search product and enterprise solutions. Furthermore, the accelerating growth and improved profitability of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), fueled by soaring demand for its AI infrastructure and custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), firmly cemented Alphabet's position as a dominant, high-growth leader in the new AI era.

The vast fortune of Larry Page has allowed him to acquire a substantial portfolio of the usual billionaire toys and real estate, including a number of private islands around the world - yes, as in more than one private island! One of the crown jewels in his collection is Eustatia Island, a pristine 30-acre private paradise located in the British Virgin Islands, situated just north of Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island. This island is designed as a model of self-sufficiency, boasting a complete state-of-the-art solar electric grid and an independent reverse osmosis desalinization plant to ensure its water supply is entirely clean and sustainable. Larry Page’s collection of tropical real estate also includes the Hans Lollik Islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Cayo Norte which is located between Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands, that he acquired for a combined total of $32 million dollars in two separate real estate transactions. On the mainland, Larry Page and his wife Lucinda Southworth maintain a notable presence in Palo Alto, California, where he purchased a 9,000 square foot Spanish Colonial Revival house in 2005 for $7.2 million dollars. He later constructed a nearby 6,000 square foot environmentally conscious home designed with sustainable principles. For maritime travel, Larry Page was the former owner of the $45 million dollars superyacht Senses, which is a 193-foot expedition vessel that he acquired in 2011, which features amenities like a helicopter landing pad and a cruising range of 6,904.67 miles.

While his fame rests on his early work with Google, Larry Page’s long-term business vision is best demonstrated by his unique business ventures and foundational ideas. His original, breakthrough concept was PageRank, the mathematical algorithm that assigned a numerical importance score to every webpage based solely on the quality and quantity of links pointing to it. This idea formed the genius core of the Google search engine. Although the patent for PageRank was assigned to Stanford University, the institution later sold its 1.8 million shares of Google stock in 2005 for a value of $336 million dollars in exchange for the exclusive license to the algorithm. Larry Page has made a number of other bets with Google’s money, including on the life sciences company Calico and the autonomous driving unit Waymo, which both operate at significant losses, at least for now. This sustained, multi-billion dollar commitment to loss-making, long-term speculative technology is a powerful measure of Larry Page’s business intelligence. Larry Page also manages the Carl Victor Page Memorial Fund, his own philanthropic vehicle, which reports total assets of over $4 billion dollars and focuses on large grants toward environmental and human services projects.

The recent rise of Larry Page to the second-richest person in the world shows the extraordinary value Wall Street has placed on companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. His massive wealth, which is now estimated at $264.9 billion dollars, is a direct result of the market’s positive response to Alphabet’s advancements in its cloud business and its next generation AI models like Gemini 3. The financial strength of the company has generated significant personal wealth for Larry Page, allowing him to successfully pass Larry Ellison for the number two spot on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List. This new positioning immediately behind Elon Musk underscores the continuing power of Silicon Valley’s founders to redefine the boundaries of personal fortune through strategic foresight and relentless technological innovation, driving the market capitalization of Alphabet toward the $4 trillion dollars mark.

Quick Hits

💰 Business

Michael Burry has been on a tear lately in his critique of companies he feels are overvalued, and he’s begun taking short positions in some of the biggest names in the newly formed AI bubble….if it’s even a bubble, which the jury is still out on.

Michael Burry is an investor and hedge fund manager famous for successfully predicting the 2008 U.S. housing crisis, and the inspiration for the movie “The Big Short”. That’s what makes his current market warnings carry such weight. Michael Burry has recently called Tesla's market valuation "ridiculously overvalued" at $1.43 trillion dollars, arguing that the company's stock price is divorced from its underlying fundamental performance.

Michael Burry's firm, Scion Asset Management, has established significant positions against several other technology players, including put options that targeted over $134 million dollars of Palantir Technologies stock and another $56 million dollars in puts against Nvidia. He’s been broadly critical of the tech industry for the widespread accounting practice of capitalizing massive expenditures on new artificial intelligence infrastructure, rather than immediately recognizing these costs as expenses. This specific accounting method, which is common among large AI "hyperscalers" like Microsoft, Alphabet, Oracle, and Meta, effectively allows these companies to artificially inflate their reported short term net earnings. Michael Burry argues that this widely adopted but misleading practice obscures the true cost of building out the massive computational power required to support the burgeoning AI industry.

If Michael Burry is saying companies like Tesla, or those in the AI industry, and are overvalued, then investors should probably listen up. This is a guy who knows what he talking about, or at least Hollywood thinks so.

🍿 Entertainment

Walt Disney's new movie “Zootopia 2” claimed the top spot over the five day Thanksgiving weekend, earning a massive $156 million dollars domestically and $556 million dollars globally. This makes “Zootopia 2” the highest worldwide debut for an animated film, and the fourth biggest opening globally for any kind of movie. The sequel shattered the previous film’s $75 million dollars domestic opening and was hugely popular in China, where it took in $272 million dollars of its total $400 million dollars international haul. So the new secret sauce for animated movies in Hollywood is to have a cute and cuddly fox and bunny, instead of a mouse with big ears or a princess.

🏡 Real Estate

A couple from Houston, Texas, John and Vicky Ambrose, purchased a 3,000 square foot dilapidated 1930s palazzo in Biella, Italy for 140,000 euros, or about $160,000 dollars, sight unseen. They knew of the region’s wine industry, and liked that it was off the beaten path of typical tourists. They had been looking for a second home in Europe to spend family vacations while hitting the slopes in the Alps; you know, like every American family dreams of.

They spent about $170,000 on renovations including new electrical, plumbing, and air conditioning. What they weren’t prepared for was the laid back approach to business in Italy, where the renovations latest more than 3 years.

They originally thought about buying one of the fabled $1 houses that have been all over social media with people from overseas buying their houses and apartments for $1 and then chronicling their renovations on YouTube. Ultimately, they didn’t want to go that route, and found that the 1930s palazzo had “good bones” that were only in need of some TLC to bring it back to its former glory.

The family doesn’t have any plans to rent the home out, but are looking forward to spending time there with family, sipping wine, and enjoying the calm and serene views for years to come. 

🏦 Offshore Banking

An initiative in Switzerland to impose a 50 percent federal tax on inheritances and gifts exceeding $61.8 million dollars has been defeated at the polls. The proposal, called the “Initiative for the Future”, was proposed by the Young Socialist party in Switzerland to generate revenue specifically for measures combating the climate crisis. Opponents of the initiative celebrated the rejection by over 78 percent of voters as a win against a risky fiscal experiment that would have resulted in wealthy families moving their money out of Switzerland and tarnishing the country’s banking biz. It looks like billionaires in Switzerland won’t have to liquidate their businesses and empty their bank accounts, so at least we have that to be thankful for this holiday season.

🤖 AI

OpenAI has announced that it has taken an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings which is focused on building and acquiring companies aligned with AI adoption. The company was spun off of Thrive Capital in April 2025, which was founded in 2010 by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner who is married to Ivanka Trump; the daughter of President Donald Trump. You get all that?

The partnership between OpenAI and Thrive Holdings was publicly announced on December 1, 2025, by OpenAI COO Officer Brad Lightcap and Thrive Holdings CEO Joshua Kushner, and will involve embedding OpenAI teams into portfolio companies.

I’m sure there’s absolutely no politics going on behind this deal. Just straight up capitalism. MM’K?

🙏 Philanthropy

Michael and Susan Dell have pledged to donate $6.25 billion dollars to seed the accounts of 25 million children’s investment accounts, otherwise referred to as ‘Trump account’ in the Big Beautiful Bill. The philanthropic gift by the Dells will deposit $250 dollars into each eligible child's account, plus an additional $1,000 dollars that the U.S. Treasury is contributing to accounts for children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028. Parents are also eligible to contribute up to $2,500 per year in pretax income. And what about parents that can’t afford to contribute to their children’s future? Well, it looks like unfortunately they’ll be getting an early lesson in the divide between the haves and the have-nots.

🍗 Space

NASA's OSIRIS REx asteroid mission has found the presence of the amino acid tryptophan, the same chemical that causes me to get sleepy after eating turkey on Thanksgiving. The mission to the asteroid Bennu returned 122 grams of material on September 24, 2023, all for the low-low price of $1.16 billion dollars for the round trip. After some analysis by geochemist Angel Mojarro of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, astrochemist José Aponte, they were able to confirm they’ve found a total of fifteenth protein building blocks in their samples. I wish I knew who was the brainiac who thought up this mission to fly some 4.4 billion miles, and spend $1.16 billion dollars, in order to find the same ingredients that were in the turkey I just made for Thanksgiving. Nice job nerds!

⚽ Sports

Major League Soccer, or MLS for those of us who love to abbreviate everything, have seen their playoff viewership numbers shoot up 23% from the 2024 season, and are now averaging 711,000 global viewers per match across all platforms. Some of that is obviously thanks to Lionel Messi and Inter Miami’s spectacular run so far, but the league’s 29% regular season increase, and the fact that Apple TV is providing free access to all playoff matches, are also helping to boost the viewership numbers this year. Who would have thought that giving away content for free would help boost viewership numbers. Score!

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.