Larry Ellison

Lawrence Joseph Ellison, born August 17, 1944, in the Bronx, New York, was given up for adoption by his unwed Jewish mother to a modest Chicago couple. A college dropout twice—University of Illinois, then University of Chicago—he taught himself programming in California during the 1970s. Inspired by an IBM paper on relational databases, Ellison co-founded Software Development Laboratories in 1977 with $2,000. Renamed Oracle in 1982, it became the first commercially viable SQL database.
Aggressive and visionary, Ellison crushed competitors. Oracle went public in 1986; by 2000, it was the world’s second-largest software firm. Cloud pivot in the 2010s—after initial skepticism—catapulted it past $50 billion annual revenue. Acquisitions fueled growth: PeopleSoft ($10.3B, 2005), Sun Microsystems ($7.4B, 2010, securing Java and hardware), NetSuite ($9.3B, 2016). Today, Oracle’s cloud infrastructure rivals AWS and Azure.
Ellison stepped down as CEO in 2014 but remains CTO and chairman, owning ~40% of the company. His $221 billion net worth (October 2025) trails only Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg. He sold billions in Oracle stock over decades, funding lavish pursuits: buying 98% of Hawaii’s Lanai island ($300M, 2012), Japanese-inspired Woodside estate, fighter jets, America’s Cup yachting victories (2010, 2013).
A five-time divorcee, father of film producers David and Megan, Ellison dated Melinda Gates briefly post-divorce. Philanthropy includes $200M+ to anti-aging research and a $370M pledge to his foundation. Critics call him arrogant, litigious; fans praise his foresight. At 81, with Oracle’s AI and healthcare cloud surging, Ellison—still coding, still competing—embodies Silicon Valley’s original pirate spirit.