From Database Pioneer to AI's Latest Champion: How 81-Year-Old Larry Ellison Reclaimed His Crown

The numbers tell a dramatic story: on September 10, 2025, Larry Ellison’s net worth touched $393 billion—surpassing Elon Musk’s $385 billion by a decisive margin. At 81 years old, the Oracle co-founder claimed the title of world’s richest person, with his wealth expanding by over $100 billion in a single trading session. The catalyst? A $300 billion, five-year partnership between Oracle and OpenAI that fundamentally rewired market perception of the company’s relevance in the AI era.

This moment represents far more than a personal victory. It marks a striking inflection point: a technology veteran once dismissed as yesterday’s player has repositioned himself at the center of tomorrow’s infrastructure boom.

The Unlikely Origin Story

Born in 1944 to an unmarried teenager in the Bronx, Ellison was adopted at nine months by a Chicago family of modest means. Education was fragmented—he cycled through the University of Illinois and University of Chicago without completing degrees. But the missing diploma mattered far less than what he discovered in Berkeley during the early 1970s: the intersection of ambition and technical possibility.

His breakthrough came at Ampex Corporation, where he encountered a CIA data management project bearing the internal codename “Oracle.” The insight wasn’t about inventing database technology—others had done that. Ellison’s genius lay in seeing commercial potential where academics saw only research puzzles.

In 1977, at 32, he and two colleagues pooled $2,000 (Ellison contributed $1,200) to launch Software Development Laboratories. They built their commercial database product directly from the CIA work, using the same “Oracle” name. By 1986, Oracle traded publicly on NASDAQ as an ascendant enterprise software player.

For decades, Ellison remained inseparable from his creation. He served as president (1978-1996), chairman (1990-1992), and returned as CEO from 1995 to 2014. Even now, as Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, his fingerprints remain on every major strategic pivot.

The Cloud Era Stumble and the AI Redemption

Oracle’s trajectory wasn’t purely upward. When cloud computing exploded in the 2010s, AWS and Azure captured mindshare while Oracle fumbled. But the company’s foundational strength—decades of enterprise relationships and unmatched database expertise—created a moat that competitors couldn’t breach.

By mid-2025, Oracle recognized the next wave: generative AI infrastructure. The company aggressively redeployed resources. It announced thousands of layoffs in traditional software and hardware sales divisions while simultaneously scaling data center capacity. The market initially viewed this as a desperate pivot. Then came the OpenAI announcement.

Suddenly, the narrative flipped. Oracle wasn’t chasing AI—it was essential infrastructure. In a single day, the stock price soared 40%, the largest daily gain since 1992. The infrastructure thesis proved potent: enterprises need compute, storage, and database sophistication to power AI applications, and Oracle possesses all three.

The Ellison Family Wealth Machine

Fortune alone doesn’t account for Ellison’s influence. His son David dramatically expanded the family portfolio by acquiring Paramount Global for $8 billion (with $6 billion from family capital), absorbing CBS and MTV. With Larry dominating Silicon Valley and David commanding Hollywood, the Ellison family now straddles technology and entertainment—a modern-day industrial dynasty.

Political participation amplified this reach. Ellison bankrolled Marco Rubio’s 2015 presidential bid and donated $15 million to Tim Scott’s Super PAC in 2022. In early 2025, he appeared at the White House alongside SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and OpenAI’s Sam Altman to unveil a $500 billion AI data center initiative—with Oracle technology anchoring the infrastructure layer. The intersection of commercial interest and political access became impossible to separate.

The Paradox: Discipline Meets Adventure

At 81, Ellison defies age. Former employees recall him spending hours daily exercising in the 1990s and 2000s, subsisting on water and green tea, maintaining spartan dietary discipline. “Twenty years younger than his peers,” peers describe him—a testament to regimented living in service of vitality.

Yet this ascetic edge coexists with extravagant indulgence. He owns 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, multiple sprawling California estates, and yacht collections rivaling national navies. His relationship with water runs deeper than real estate: surfing nearly killed him in 1992, yet he couldn’t abandon the sport. He pivoted instead toward sailing with the same intensity, funding Oracle Team USA’s triumphant America’s Cup comeback in 2013. In 2018, he founded SailGP, a high-speed catamaran league that recruited investors including actress Anne Hathaway and footballer Mbappé.

The self-discipline and risk-seeking aren’t contradictory—they’re two expressions of the same competitive temperament. Ellison doesn’t live with constraints; he lives with intention.

Personal Life and the Fifth Marriage

This intensity extends to his romantic life, though perhaps less successfully. Four previous marriages preceded a 2024 union with Jolin Zhu, a Chinese-American woman 47 years his junior. News of Larry Ellison’s spouse emerged quietly through a University of Michigan donation acknowledgment: “Larry Ellison and his wife, Jolin.”

Zhu, born in Shenyang and educated at Michigan, entered public consciousness through social media speculation. Some observers joked that Ellison’s romantic appetites matched his passion for surfing—both pursuits undertaken with youthful enthusiasm, regardless of age. The marriage itself confirmed that even at an advanced age, Ellison remains willing to make unconventional choices.

Philanthropy on His Own Terms

In 2010, Ellison signed the Giving Pledge, committing 95% of his wealth to charitable causes. Unlike Gates or Buffett, he resists collaborative giving or peer influence. A New York Times interviewer captured his philosophy: he “cherishes solitude” and refuses external ideological pressure.

His donations reflect this independence. A $200 million gift to USC established a cancer research center. More recently, he directed capital toward the Ellison Institute of Technology—a partnership with Oxford University focused on healthcare innovation, agricultural efficiency, and clean energy. His stated mission: design next-generation lifesaving medicines, build affordable agricultural systems, and engineer sustainable power.

The approach mirrors his career: Ellison doesn’t follow philanthropic consensus. He architects his own vision of future impact.

The Legacy of the Persistent Outsider

At 81, Larry Ellison didn’t merely inherit wealth or ride a single wave to fortune. He began with a government contract, built a database company into a global software titan, weathered cloud computing disruption, and astutely repositioned for the AI era. The $393 billion valuation represents not a final destination but the latest vindication of a combative, relentless temperament.

Ellison embodies a particular Silicon Valley archetype: the founder-rebel who won’t retire, the competitor who views stagnation as death. His marriages, his adventures, his political connections, his yachts—they’re all expressions of someone fundamentally unwilling to accept limits, whether imposed by age, market cycles, or conventional wisdom.

The world’s richest title may rotate again. But for now, Ellison has demonstrated something more durable: that the old guard of technology, if ruthless enough and adaptable enough, can claim relevance in transforming eras. His story isn’t primarily about money. It’s about refusing irrelevance.