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81 years old, four-time divorcee, and for the moment the richest person in the world. He never knew his dad. His 19-year-old mom gave him up, and he was raised in a two-bedroom apartment on the South Side of Chicago by his aunt and uncle. And here he is.
Oracle had been under the radar for a while, but now he’s signed a massive deal with OpenAI and could even end up buying TikTok. Fascinating guy. (We all have our demons though. His girlfriend is a Michigan alum, and Larry funded the NIL for their five-star QB. Bad Larry.)
Larry Ellison seems to be in the middle of everything these days.
The 81-year-old briefly became the richest man in the world this past week, as Oracle ORCL -5.09%decrease; red down pointing triangle shares surged on the news of key artificial-intelligence contracts, including a massive deal with OpenAI.
A day later, Ellison made headlines as a cultural power broker. The Ellison family, which recently took over Paramount, is preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery WBD 16.70%increase; green up pointing triangle, a behemoth combination that would transform the entertainment industry, The Wall Street Journal reported.
He has Trump’s blessing to buy TikTok, should the Chinese government sign off on the sale. And his son, who runs Paramount Skydance PSKY 7.62%increase; green up pointing triangle, is in hot pursuit of the Free Press, Bari Weiss’s digital news outlet. Ellison even made a surprise donation to help secure the No. 1 quarterback for the University of Michigan football team late last year.
“I’m addicted to winning,” Ellison told “60 Minutes” in 2004. “The more you win, the more you want to win.”
The billionaire chairman of Oracle has always relished being close to the action, whether that’s courtside at the Indian Wells tennis tournament (he owns it) or on the deck of a yacht in the America’s Cup (he has won the sailing competition). He has cemented himself as a preferred partner for the Trump administration, and continues to influence the future of technology some half a century after co-founding Oracle, which changed the game in how organizations store and manage vast quantities of data.
The AI revolution—in the view of no less an authority than Ellison himself—is poised to reshape the global economy and society as we know it.
“AI is a much bigger deal than the Industrial Revolution, electricity and everything that’s come before,” Ellison told former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair in an interview at the World Governments Summit in Dubai in February.
Written off by Wall Street as an also-ran in the cloud-computing wars after falling behind Amazon and Microsoft, Oracle has come surging back thanks to several billion-dollar contracts with big AI players known as hyperscalers, most notably OpenAI. Oracle’s disclosure in its recent earnings report that it has $455 billion in outstanding contract revenue led to its biggest single-day stock gain since December 1992. The gain briefly propelled Ellison, who owns a roughly 40% stake in Oracle, past Elon Musk as the world’s richest individual. His fortune is estimated at around $363 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Ellison was raised in a two-bedroom apartment on the South Side of Chicago by his aunt and uncle after his 19-year-old biological mother gave him up. He never knew his biological father. “I had all the disadvantages necessary for success,” he said in a 2018 interview with Fox Business.
Ellison dropped out of college twice before moving to Berkeley, Calif., and eventually took a job at technology firm Ampex. There, he worked on a database project for the Central Intelligence Agency that was called “Oracle”—a name he liked enough to eventually use it for his own database startup, formed in 1977.
Oracle went public in 1986, and by the early ’90s, Ellison had joined the Forbes list of billionaires.
As his fortune grew, so did his competitive streak, with Microsoft CEO Bill Gates becoming a particular focus. In 2000, when Microsoft was under an antitrust investigation, Ellison admitted publicly to hiring investigators to dig up information on Microsoft’s political activities and allies. He called the act a “civic duty.” A federal judge ruled that Microsoft wielded its monopoly power over operating systems for personal computers.
Ellison’s own rise has drawn scrutiny. In the early 2000s, shareholders sued Ellison and alleged that he sold approximately $900 million worth of Oracle stock before the company announced it wouldn’t meet its expected earnings. He later settled the suit, without admitting wrongdoing, and agreed to donate $100 million to charity.
Ellison has voiced a desire to be the world’s richest person for years, according to a person familiar with the matter. He has funneled much of his wealth into real estate. His holdings include a massive estate in Malibu, an 8,000-square-foot home in Silicon Valley modeled on an imperial Japanese palace, a villa in Japan and the crown jewel: the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which he purchased 98% of in 2012 and has since developed into a luxury holistic wellness resort.
Ellison has been through four divorces and has two adult children: David, the head of Paramount Skydance, and Megan, founder of Annapurna Pictures. When Ellison made the football donation last year, it was revealed that he was married to Jolin Zhu, more than 40 years his junior and a Michigan alum.
Musk has described Ellison as “one of the smartest people,” and Ellison has often cited Musk, publicly and privately, as driving his thinking.
When Musk went seeking outside investors for his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022, Ellison was among the first to step up. He texted Musk, offering “a billion…or whatever you recommend.”
At the Oracle Health Summit in 2024, Ellison, explaining the company’s $28.3 billion acquisition of medical-data firm Cerner, said healthcare was “the only big problem Elon left us. So space was gone, clean power generation, electric vehicles were gone.” Ellison also has cited Musk’s network of science- and technology-focused companies as one source of inspiration for the Ellison Institute of Technology, a massive project he is funding where University of Oxford academics will use Oracle technology to seek for-profit solutions to food security, climate change and other global problems.
Oracle had been under the radar for a while, but now he’s signed a massive deal with OpenAI and could even end up buying TikTok. Fascinating guy. (We all have our demons though. His girlfriend is a Michigan alum, and Larry funded the NIL for their five-star QB. Bad Larry.)
Larry Ellison Is More Interesting Than Ever at 81
The Oracle co-founder is almost as wealthy as Elon Musk, and he’s in the middle of the AI revolution, the future of entertainment and maybe even a deal for TikTok
Larry Ellison seems to be in the middle of everything these days.
The 81-year-old briefly became the richest man in the world this past week, as Oracle ORCL -5.09%decrease; red down pointing triangle shares surged on the news of key artificial-intelligence contracts, including a massive deal with OpenAI.
A day later, Ellison made headlines as a cultural power broker. The Ellison family, which recently took over Paramount, is preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery WBD 16.70%increase; green up pointing triangle, a behemoth combination that would transform the entertainment industry, The Wall Street Journal reported.
He has Trump’s blessing to buy TikTok, should the Chinese government sign off on the sale. And his son, who runs Paramount Skydance PSKY 7.62%increase; green up pointing triangle, is in hot pursuit of the Free Press, Bari Weiss’s digital news outlet. Ellison even made a surprise donation to help secure the No. 1 quarterback for the University of Michigan football team late last year.
“I’m addicted to winning,” Ellison told “60 Minutes” in 2004. “The more you win, the more you want to win.”
The billionaire chairman of Oracle has always relished being close to the action, whether that’s courtside at the Indian Wells tennis tournament (he owns it) or on the deck of a yacht in the America’s Cup (he has won the sailing competition). He has cemented himself as a preferred partner for the Trump administration, and continues to influence the future of technology some half a century after co-founding Oracle, which changed the game in how organizations store and manage vast quantities of data.
The AI revolution—in the view of no less an authority than Ellison himself—is poised to reshape the global economy and society as we know it.
“AI is a much bigger deal than the Industrial Revolution, electricity and everything that’s come before,” Ellison told former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair in an interview at the World Governments Summit in Dubai in February.
Written off by Wall Street as an also-ran in the cloud-computing wars after falling behind Amazon and Microsoft, Oracle has come surging back thanks to several billion-dollar contracts with big AI players known as hyperscalers, most notably OpenAI. Oracle’s disclosure in its recent earnings report that it has $455 billion in outstanding contract revenue led to its biggest single-day stock gain since December 1992. The gain briefly propelled Ellison, who owns a roughly 40% stake in Oracle, past Elon Musk as the world’s richest individual. His fortune is estimated at around $363 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Ellison was raised in a two-bedroom apartment on the South Side of Chicago by his aunt and uncle after his 19-year-old biological mother gave him up. He never knew his biological father. “I had all the disadvantages necessary for success,” he said in a 2018 interview with Fox Business.
Ellison dropped out of college twice before moving to Berkeley, Calif., and eventually took a job at technology firm Ampex. There, he worked on a database project for the Central Intelligence Agency that was called “Oracle”—a name he liked enough to eventually use it for his own database startup, formed in 1977.
Oracle went public in 1986, and by the early ’90s, Ellison had joined the Forbes list of billionaires.
As his fortune grew, so did his competitive streak, with Microsoft CEO Bill Gates becoming a particular focus. In 2000, when Microsoft was under an antitrust investigation, Ellison admitted publicly to hiring investigators to dig up information on Microsoft’s political activities and allies. He called the act a “civic duty.” A federal judge ruled that Microsoft wielded its monopoly power over operating systems for personal computers.
Ellison’s own rise has drawn scrutiny. In the early 2000s, shareholders sued Ellison and alleged that he sold approximately $900 million worth of Oracle stock before the company announced it wouldn’t meet its expected earnings. He later settled the suit, without admitting wrongdoing, and agreed to donate $100 million to charity.
Ellison has voiced a desire to be the world’s richest person for years, according to a person familiar with the matter. He has funneled much of his wealth into real estate. His holdings include a massive estate in Malibu, an 8,000-square-foot home in Silicon Valley modeled on an imperial Japanese palace, a villa in Japan and the crown jewel: the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which he purchased 98% of in 2012 and has since developed into a luxury holistic wellness resort.
Ellison has been through four divorces and has two adult children: David, the head of Paramount Skydance, and Megan, founder of Annapurna Pictures. When Ellison made the football donation last year, it was revealed that he was married to Jolin Zhu, more than 40 years his junior and a Michigan alum.
Musk has described Ellison as “one of the smartest people,” and Ellison has often cited Musk, publicly and privately, as driving his thinking.
When Musk went seeking outside investors for his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022, Ellison was among the first to step up. He texted Musk, offering “a billion…or whatever you recommend.”
At the Oracle Health Summit in 2024, Ellison, explaining the company’s $28.3 billion acquisition of medical-data firm Cerner, said healthcare was “the only big problem Elon left us. So space was gone, clean power generation, electric vehicles were gone.” Ellison also has cited Musk’s network of science- and technology-focused companies as one source of inspiration for the Ellison Institute of Technology, a massive project he is funding where University of Oxford academics will use Oracle technology to seek for-profit solutions to food security, climate change and other global problems.
