Researched by Nancy Okojie,
Here is the man of the moment who fought to the top surpassing Elon Musk as the world richest ranked person for one day, Larry Ellison.
When you think about the top echelon of the world’s tech elites, Larry Ellison probably doesn’t spring to mind. But on Wednesday, the 81-year-old chairman of Oracle briefly became the richest person in the world with a net worth of almost $400 billion, overtaking Elon Musk.
Larry Ellison’s journey is a compelling testament to the power of relentless ambition and a visionary’s mindset. From a challenging start as a college dropout, he co-founded a company that would not only endure but thrive, fundamentally reshaping the modern technological landscape.
His story is one of audacious bets, strategic acquisitions, and an unwavering belief in his own vision, even when it put him at odds with the status quo.
Ellison’s $100-billion jump was the biggest single-day gain ever, and the result of a promising Oracle growth forecast in which they advertised hundreds of billions of dollars in inbound revenue from AI companies using Oracle’s cloud computing capabilities. Ellison’s stratospheric rise can be attributed both to the dynamics of the current AI boom, and his own approach to corporate financing.
Oracle’s stock went wild with the news, pushing his fortune even higher. Ellison’s net worth shot up to $393bn, surpassing Musk’s $384bn – although, by the time markets closed on Wednesday, Musk was back ahead.
Because Ellison owns so much Oracle stock, his net worth swings up and down along with the share price. That’s why his worth catapulted past Elon this week—only to return back to around $376 billion a day later.
The Architect of Data
At the heart of Ellison’s legacy is the creation of Oracle Corporation and its flagship product, the relational database. In the 1970s, he and his partners saw the immense commercial potential in a concept that IBM had dismissed. They developed a structured query language (SQL) database that was revolutionary in its ability to organize and manage vast amounts of information for businesses and governments. This innovation became the backbone of countless global operations, from banking and airlines to retail and healthcare. Ellison’s genius was not just in creating the technology, but in his aggressive salesmanship and strategic positioning that made Oracle the dominant force in the enterprise software market.
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He was able to outmaneuver rivals by anticipating market trends, positioning Oracle’s products to run on any computer, and building a comprehensive suite of integrated software.
Low in the stack — Oracle isn’t thriving in every metric. The company missed on analysts’ revenue expectations, and has a projected three more years of negative cash flow. One industry publication reported that the company just underwent significant layoffs.
But at the moment, we’re at the stage of an AI hype cycle in which the main spenders on AI aren’t end users, but rather the AI companies building the products. This means that the biggest beneficiaries are the companies lower in the stack, including chipmakers like NVIDIA—and Oracle, which owns and operates data centers which provide cloud infrastructure to other AI companies.
The Bold Maverick and Philanthropist
Ellison’s career has been defined by his bold, often controversial, persona. He has never shied away from fierce competition, famously battling rivals like Microsoft and Google. His leadership style, while often described as assertive, has been instrumental in driving Oracle’s growth through strategic acquisitions, including the high-profile purchases of PeopleSoft and Sun Microsystems. These moves solidified Oracle’s market position and expanded its reach into hardware and new software platforms.
Beyond the business world, Ellison is known for his adventurous lifestyle, including his passion for yacht racing and his acquisition of the Hawaiian island of Lānaʻi. But his impact extends to philanthropy as well. He is a signatory of The Giving Pledge, committing to donate the majority of his wealth to charitable causes. His philanthropic efforts have focused on medical research, education, and environmental conservation. He founded the Ellison Medical Foundation to fund research into age-related diseases and has made significant contributions to institutions like the University of Southern California to establish a cancer research center. Ellison’s journey proves that a maverick’s ambition can not only build a formidable empire but also be a powerful force for good.
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Oracle’s ability to solve the vast logistical challenges inherent in building super clusters releases AI companies from operations burdens, making them an appealing partner. And they often charge less than their competitors. As a result, they’ve signed contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars with companies like OpenAI and xAI. When Oracle advertised these deals and all of this future revenue on Wednesday morning, the company’s shares jumped around 38%.
It’s who you know — It can’t hurt that Ellison has strong relationships with the world’s other most powerful men. Ellison hosted a fundraiser for Trump in 2020, was spotted at Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s fundraising efforts last year, and became a primary partner on Trump’s Stargate project in January, which aims to build $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the U.S. Ellison has also long been close with Musk: In 2022, he agreed in a text message to Musk to put a billion dollars, or “whatever you recommend,” toward his efforts to buy Twitter.
Ellison is not as much of a household name as Musk, but he is largely influential in Silicon Valley and more recently, politics. He’s known for a lavish lifestyle filled with mega-yachts, private jets, a long list of wives, and owning the entire Hawaiian island of Lanai.
The 81-year-old mega-billionaire made his fortune in software development going back to the 1970s. He co-founded Oracle after landing a two-year contract building a database for the CIA, according to the Academy of Achievement.
Oracle became a tech giant creating software for Fortune 500 companies around the world, and more recently in cloud computing. The advent of artificial intelligence has been a boon for the company, entering lucrative deals with the likes of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
Ellison was the CEO of Oracle for 37 years, and then transitioned in 2014 to the role of chief technology officer. He still heads the board of directors and owns more than 40% of the company, which moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, in 2020.
Along with Oracle, Ellison sat on Tesla’s board of directors from 2018 to 2022 and owns a stake in Musk’s electric car company. According to Forbes, he also owns nearly 50% of the newly minted media conglomerate Paramount Skydance, which is run by his son David. The company’s properties include CBS, MTV, Paramount Pictures and more. The younger Ellison has said that the media company won’t cater to political parties. Still, he’s on the verge of bringing on Bari Weiss, the polarizing anti-woke champion who co-founded the Free Press, to help lead CBS News.
