Larry Ellison, co-founder of the software company Oracle, is having a good year. His friend Donald Trump is in the White House, his son David Ellison has taken over the storied media company CBS, and on Wednesday he surpassed his buddy Elon Musk to win the title of the “world’s richest man”.
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.
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.
“AI is a much bigger deal than the Industrial Revolution, electricity and everything that’s come before,” Ellison said, touting the technology, in an interview with the former UK prime minister Tony Blair in February.
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.
Ellison’s ties to Trump and Netanyahu
Ellison has a decade-long history with the Republican party and a close relationship with Trump going back to the president’s first term. Ellison has frequented Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for dinners and met him in the Oval Office. As Trump has repeatedly postponed complying with the supreme court’s January ruling to ban TikTok if it’s not sold, Oracle has emerged as the lead buyer of the popular social media app.
“In the case of Larry, Larry Ellison, it’s well beyond technology, sort of CEO of everything,” Trump said during a news conference a day after he was inaugurated. “He’s an amazing man and an amazing business person.”
Ellison is also close to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and has donated heavily to the Israeli military through the non-profit Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. In 2017, he gave the organisation its biggest-ever donation at the time – $16.6m. Oracle did not respond to questions from the Guardian asking if Ellison has donated more recently.
Ellison has hosted Netanyahu and other dignitaries and celebrities at his huge estate on Lanai, according to Bloomberg. He bought 98% of the island in 2012 and has since created an exclusive luxury Four Seasons resort and started a hydroponic farm that grows lettuce and other greens. Local Lanai residents told Bloomberg that they have scrambled to hold on to their scant land as they have seen their island transform from a sleepy outpost to a destination for the ultra-rich.
Musk, Ellison’s friend and rival for “world’s richest man”, is a frequent guest on Lanai and calls the Oracle co-founder his mentor, according to a biography on Musk by Walter Isaacson. Earlier this year, during a podcast with the Texas senator Ted Cruz, Musk was asked who is the smartest guy he had ever met.
“Larry Ellison is very smart,” Musk said. “I will say Larry Ellison is one of the smartest people.”
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