How a Database Pioneer Became the World's Richest Man: Inside Larry Ellison's AI Gamble and Five Marriages

On September 10, 2025, a historic moment unfolded on the wealth leaderboard. Oracle’s 81-year-old co-founder Larry Ellison officially claimed the title of world’s richest person, dethroning Elon Musk with a staggering $393 billion net worth—a jump of over $100 billion in a single trading day. The catalyst? A partnership announcement that rewrote the AI infrastructure narrative: Oracle’s $300 billion five-year deal with OpenAI, triggering the stock price to explode 40% in one day, marking its most dramatic jump since 1992.

But this wasn’t just a Wall Street victory. For Ellison, it represented something deeper: vindication. After decades of watching Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure dominate cloud computing, Oracle had finally found its lane in the AI boom. This raises a question that Silicon Valley has long pondered—how does an 81-year-old tech veteran stay relevant, let alone become history’s wealthiest person?

From Dropout to Database Dynasty

The Ellison story began not in boardrooms but in abandonment. Born in 1944 in the Bronx to an unmarried 19-year-old mother, he was placed for adoption at nine months old. His adoptive parents were working-class—his father a government employee—and young Larry bounced between colleges (University of Illinois, University of Chicago) before dropping out completely.

The real education came after. In the early 1970s, as a programmer at Ampex Corporation, Ellison worked on a classified project that changed everything: a database system for the CIA, code-named “Oracle.” That name, and that concept, became the foundation of everything that followed.

In 1977, armed with $2,000 in startup capital (Ellison’s contribution: $1,200) and two co-founders, he launched Software Development Laboratories. Rather than invent new database technology, Ellison did something more valuable: he recognized that databases had commercial potential. He built a general-purpose system, branded it “Oracle,” and methodically transformed it into the enterprise standard. By 1986, Oracle went public on NASDAQ and dominated the market for decades.

What made Ellison different wasn’t genius—it was vision and ruthlessness. He held nearly every executive position at Oracle over four decades, steering the company through booms and busts, near-death experiences (literally a 1992 surfing accident that nearly killed him), and technological upheavals. Even after stepping down as CEO in 2014, he remained Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, maintaining his grip on the company’s soul.

The Late-Stage Comeback: AI as the Second Act

Oracle’s cloud computing journey wasn’t glorious. Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure lapped it early. But traditional strengths—database expertise and deep enterprise relationships—made Oracle a dark horse candidate for the AI infrastructure race.

By 2025, Ellison’s company had pivoted aggressively. Thousands of layoffs in legacy divisions freed up capital for data center buildouts and AI infrastructure. When the generative AI boom demanded massive computational capacity, Oracle was positioned to supply it. The OpenAI partnership crystallized this shift: Oracle transformed from “outdated software giant” to “essential AI infrastructure provider.”

On a single day, the market revalued the company based on this narrative pivot. The $300 billion commitment from OpenAI validated what Ellison had wagered: that in the age of AI, infrastructure and data management would be as critical as intelligence.

The Ellison Empire: Silicon Valley to Hollywood

Wealth, however, has never stopped at Ellison’s desk. In 2024, his son David Ellison acquired Paramount Global—the CBS and MTV parent company—for $8 billion, with $6 billion funded by the Ellison family fortune. This wasn’t just a business deal; it was a dynasty move, extending the family’s reach from technology into media and entertainment. Two generations, two industries, one empire.

Ellison’s political influence has also expanded proportionally to his wealth. A longtime Republican donor, he financed Marco Rubio’s 2015 presidential campaign and contributed $15 million to Tim Scott’s Super PAC in 2022. More tellingly, in January 2025, he appeared at the White House alongside SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and OpenAI’s Sam Altman to announce the $500 billion AI data center network. Oracle technology would sit at the core. Power, it seems, is just another asset class he’s mastered.

The Personal Contradictions: Discipline Meets Excess

At 81, Ellison presents a study in contradictions that should be impossible. He owns 98% of Hawaii’s Lanai island, maintains multiple California estates, and collects yachts that read like a nautical Forbes list. Yet he’s ascetic about health—exercising for hours daily throughout the 1990s and 2000s, drinking only water and green tea, maintaining a diet that executives describe as almost monastic.

The result? He looks two decades younger than his peers, a physical embodiment of his refusal to age like everyone else.

His passion for water and wind is almost primal. After nearly dying in a 1992 surfing accident, most people would retire from the sport. Ellison doubled down. He shifted to sailing, backing Oracle Team USA’s stunning America’s Cup comeback in 2013—a victory he still relishes. In 2018, he founded SailGP, a high-speed catamaran racing league that attracted celebrity investors including Anne Hathaway and Kylian Mbappé.

Tennis became another obsession. He revived the Indian Wells tournament in California and rebranded it the “fifth Grand Slam.”

The Marriage Pattern: Serial Relationships and a 47-Year Age Gap

Then there’s the other pattern everyone notices: Ellison’s approach to marriage.

He’s been married four times officially, with a fifth union that only recently surfaced. In 2024, documents from the University of Michigan revealed that Ellison had married Jolin Zhu, a Chinese-American woman 47 years his junior, in what appeared to be a quiet ceremony. Zhu was born in Shenyang, China, and graduated from the University of Michigan. Their union wasn’t announced through press releases or public fanfare—it emerged through a donation attribution.

The internet responded with characteristic humor: “Ellison loves surfing and dating,” the jokes went. For a man who has spent decades pursuing thrills—whether riding waves or commanding boardrooms—romantic pursuits seem to occupy the same category as competitive sports. The waves and the women keep coming; Ellison keeps engaging.

His relationship pattern reflects a particular flavor of wealth-enabled behavior: the ability to live without conventional constraints. Most 81-year-olds don’t remarry to women 47 years younger. Most don’t have the option. Ellison does.

Philanthropy on His Terms

In 2010, Ellison signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate at least 95% of his wealth. But unlike Gates and Buffett, he’s rarely been a collaborative philanthropist. He doesn’t seek membership in their club or alignment with their priorities.

His giving reflects his singularity. In 2016, he donated $200 million to USC for cancer research. Recently, he announced plans to direct wealth toward the Ellison Institute of Technology, a partnership with Oxford University focused on healthcare innovation, sustainable agriculture, and clean energy development.

“We will design a new generation of lifesaving drugs, build low-cost agricultural systems, and develop efficient and clean energy,” he posted. The tone is characteristically Ellison—independent, visionary, uninterested in consensus or collaboration. Philanthropy, like everything else in his life, bends to his will.

Conclusion: The Prodigal’s Vindication

At 81, Larry Ellison has proven something that wealth alone cannot usually accomplish: that reinvention is possible even at the end of a career. The man who built a database empire in the 1980s and struggled through the cloud computing transition has emerged as a central figure in the AI infrastructure race.

He’s stubborn, combative, and unapologetic about his personal life—four marriages, soon to be five, each one a reflection of his refusal to accept ordinary limits. He owns islands and sails in competitions that fewer than a hundred people on Earth could even access. He shapes policy from the shadows and shapes technology from the foreground.

The title of world’s richest person will probably change hands again. Markets shift, valuations fluctuate, fortunes rise and fall. But Ellison has already demonstrated what matters: that the old guard of tech still has moves. In an age being remade by AI, the infrastructure that runs it might very well be built on systems designed by an 81-year-old who refuses to fade away.