Everything to know about Larry Ellison, the new richest man in the world

Larry Ellison is the kind of person who builds kingdoms, burns competitors, marries whoever he wants, and then buys an entire island to host the afterparty.

This guy’s not new money, and he’s not Wall Street slick. He’s the person who made databases a billion-dollar war, turned tech boardrooms into blood sport, and somehow still ended up in Iron Man 2 in 2010.

Then, out of nowhere yesterday, he became the richest man on earth with a net worth of $399 billion, as Cryptopolitan reported. So who really is this man Silicon Valley follows and Wall Street fears?

Born in August 1944, in the middle of the kind of America that didn’t even know what a computer was, Larry clawed his way from the margins of the tech industry by doing something no one else wanted to do: build the back-end stuff. The unsexy stuff. Databases.

After a short stint at Amdahl Corporation, he landed at Ampex Corporation, where he helped build a database for the CIA. They called it “Oracle,” and that was where the obsession began.

Build Oracle and weaponize software

In 1977, Larry put $1,200 of his own money into a company he co-founded called Software Development Laboratories, or SDL. Two partners joined, and the total capital was $2,000. He didn’t even write the code. “The other guys were better technically,” Larry once said, “so I did sales.”

By 1979, the company rebranded as Relational Software Inc. They launched Oracle version 2—there was never a version 1, and went straight for IBM’s throat.

Larry wanted Oracle to work with IBM’s System R, based on the same relational database ideas from Edgar F. Codd’s groundbreaking paper. IBM blocked him. They refused to share their error codes, but hey, Larry didn’t whine. He just made Oracle better.

In 1983, the company changed its name to Oracle Systems Corporation. Then came 1990, and things blew up for all the wrong reasons. Oracle had been booking future sales as if they were current revenue. “An incredible business mistake,” Larry admitted later.

The company laid off 10% of its staff, had to restate earnings twice, and paid out settlements in class-action lawsuits.

But even in the middle of that, and while IBM was busy choking on its own arrogance and Sybase was losing focus after merging with Powersoft, Larry was still planning Oracle’s next moves.

Sybase was flying high from 1990 to 1993, but by 1996, after giving up its Windows rights to Microsoft, it was toast. Microsoft turned that into SQL Server, and Oracle picked up the slack.

Larry never looked back.

Exploit chaos and cash out hard

In 2010, The Wall Street Journal declared him the highest-paid executive of the decade, pocketing $1.84 billion. And that wasn’t even peak Larry. In 2011, Forbes had him as the fifth richest man globally. By 2012, he was number three in the U.S. with $44 billion, sitting right behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

In 2013, Bloomberg listed him eighth richest on the planet. Then Larry went shopping. Larry bought into Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Quark Biotechnology, and Astex Pharmaceuticals.

After that, Larry made the ultimate power move when Oracle bought NetSuite in 2016 for $9.3 billion. Larry owned 35% of NetSuite. He walked away $3.5 billion richer.

In 2012, he dropped between $500 and $600 million to buy 98% of Lānaʻi, a Hawaiian island, from David H. Murdock’s Castle & Cooke just to throw an afterparty with a few of his buddies.

Then in 2014, Larry gave up the CEO title at Oracle. He handed it to Mark Hurd and Safra Catz. But he didn’t step down. He just slid sideways into the chief technology officer and executive chairman roles.

He joined Tesla’s board in 2018 after buying 3 million shares. He stuck around until August 2022. And even after leaving, he still holds 1.4% of Tesla. That’s on top of his 42.9% ownership of Oracle by late 2022.

Larry tried branching out with Project Ronin, a health-tech startup he co-founded with David Agus and Dave Hodgson. The goal? Transform cancer care using better data analysis from medical records. By 2024, it collapsed. He didn’t fight it. He shut it down and moved on.

But that’s just what Larry does. He tests, he trades, he leaves.

If Oracle was Larry’s first love, Larry’s marriages were trial-and-error. He married Adda Quinn in 1967. Divorced in 1974. Then came Nancy Wheeler Jenkins in 1976, who gave up her SDL shares for $500 when they split in 1978.

In 1983, he married Barbara Boothe, a former receptionist at Oracle’s early version. They had two kids, David and Megan, now both film producers. That marriage ended in 1986.

In 2003, he married romance novelist Melanie Craft at his Woodside estate. The photographer? Steve Jobs. The officiant? Congressman Tom Lantos. The marriage lasted until 2010. Then came Nikita Kahn, Ukrainian-American model. They were together until 2020. By 2024, he had married Jolin (Keren) Ellison, a University of Michigan grad.

Larry doesn’t drink. He doesn’t touch drugs. “I can’t stand anything that clouds my mind,” he once said.

But his garage? That’s another story. He owns an Audi R8, a McLaren F1, and a Lexus LFA. But his favorite car is the Acura NSX. He gave one away every year during its production.