Inside Larry Ellison's blueprint for world dominance

Larry Ellison did not briefly become the world’s richest man this year by accident. Some may say that luck played its part along the way, but as somebody who is completely obsessed by winning, Larry Ellison would tell you it was all by design. Ellison did not become the richest man in the world through saving money either. In stark contrast with someone like Warren Buffet, Ellison is known for his lavish spending habits and having a taste for owning the biggest or the best.

In 2004, he took delivery of the world’s biggest super-yacht of its time, Rising Sun, at an estimated cost of over $200 million. And his love of boats didn’t stop there. An avid sailor, he famously bankrolled BMW Oracle Racing (Team USA) $400 million to win the America’s Cup in 2010, for the first time in 15 years. In 2012, he bought 98% of Lānaʻi (Hawaii’s sixth-largest island) as a testbed for sustainability and data driven high-tech farming. It later became home to his wellness brand Sensei. Ellison has bought military fighter jets, tennis stadiums, businesses and has amassed a global property portfolio that would rival the empires of Rockefeller and Rothschild. But how has he managed to spend so prolifically yet still become the richest being on the planet?

The Rising Sun superyacht at the 2006 Cannes Film festival

At 81 years old he has held onto power at his software company, Oracle, longer than any other founder among the upper echelons of the world’s biggest technology firms. While he may no longer be CEO, he still sits as Executive Chairman of the board and holds the job title Chief Technology Officer, therefore, he still steers the ship.

Ellison lifting the trophy of the 2010 America's Cup

Where most founders of big tech firms have reduced their ownership over the years, Ellison has kept the majority of his shares in Oracle, still owning a whopping 41% of the business. Compare that with the likes of Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos, who’s ownerships sit closer to 10%, or at most 15%, Ellison has avoided significant dilution or selling off shares to fund his lifestyle and other ventures – which is remarkable given how much he spends. Instead, he was able to pledge his shares as collateral for personal loans, allowing him to retain his huge stake in Oracle, while enjoying some of the spoils.

BMW Oracle Racing (Team USA) competing in the 2010 America's Cup in Valencia, Spain.

Bronx-born and raised in Chicago, Ellison came from quite humble beginnings. Told by his adoptive father out of the blue one day that he was adopted and would never amount to much, he set out to prove a point from a young age. An average student who dropped out of college twice, Ellison found work as a software writer with Ampex Corporation in California. Realising that relational databases had been overlooked by big tech firms such as IBM, he spotted an opportunity. With just $2,000, Ellison founded Software Development Laboratories, with friend Bob Miner, in 1977 at the age of 34.

Larry Ellison and Elon Musk in the Red Bull Garage at the 2023 Miami Formula One

One of their first assignments was a relational database for the CIA, codenamed Project Oracle. Derived from the theories of IBM researcher Edgar Codd, the system securely stored and organised highly sensitive data. Ellison and Miner built what they called Oracle Version 2, skipping version 1 so as not to appear new, untested and laden with bugs. This is what gave the business its name and helped transform the way banks, insurers and governments across the world handle data. Oracle’s software is now so ubiquitous, it runs quietly in the background of countless transactions we make on a daily basis, from booking flights to making bank transfers.

On 12th March 1986, Oracle listed publicly on the NASDAQ, at a value of $270 million. Trumped the very next day by Microsoft’s IPO, at a value of roughly $780 million, Ellison put Bill Gates squarely in his crosshairs. Ever since, Ellison has seemingly aspired to beat Gates, openly mocking the PC and inventing his own device, the Network Computer, an internet-based challenger to Windows. While the Network Computer ended up being a commercial flop, it was later noted as being before it’s time with the potential to have one day become a huge success.

Larry Ellison and Bill Gates spectating at the 2021 BNP Paribas Tennis Open

Throughout the early 2000s, Oracle absorbed a staggering 56 companies, in a strategy nicknamed Surround SAP. Costing the firm around $40 billion, this aggressive acquisition spree, led by Ellison, established Oracle as a top player in enterprise applications and middleware, bringing in major assets such as programming language Java and open-source relational database system MySQL, under the purchase of Sun in 2010. However, Oracle was famously late to cloud, with Ellison publicly dismissing it as hype in 2009. This underestimation of the sector cost Oracle at the time, but the business successfully fought to make up for its off-the-pace start.

Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch attend a meeting at the Oval Office with President Trump in February 2025.

In September 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported on a rumoured $300 billion deal between Oracle and Open AI, as one of the largest cloud deals ever contemplated and potential putting Oracle at the forefront of the AI arms race. This speculation caused an explosion in Oracle’s share price, projecting the company’s valuation to just shy of a trillion dollars, and briefly placing Ellison’s net worth above Elon Musk. At the same time Ellison has poured energy into Sensei, his wellness venture on the Hawaiian island of Lānaʻi, turning paradise into a laboratory for longevity, diet and health technology. His ambition here is no less sweeping: to crack the code of how human survival, and to extend not just life, but performance.

Larry and son David Ellison in 2013

And then there is his latest move into media and alliance with President Trump. His son, Hollywood producer David Ellison, has recently merged Skydance with Paramount, and reports swirl that the family is circling other giants such Warner Bros Discovery and a stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations, backed by the Trump administration. It is a striking convergence of cloud infrastructure, AI models, wellness data, influential media channels and politics. Now all within his grasp, he seems less like a software salesman and more like somebody assembling the levers of twenty-first century power. The inner workings of a mind fixated on being number one is quite fascinating. Whether history casts him as visionary, monopolist, or something stranger remains to be seen — but one thing is for certain: Larry Ellison has no intention of bowing out of our screens any time soon.