Who Is Larry Ellison Today?
Larry Ellison is the cofounder of Oracle Corporation and serves as its executive chairman of the board and chief technology officer, roles that keep him deeply involved in both the company’s strategy and its core technologies.[4] He started Oracle in 1977 and led it as CEO until 2014, building it into one of the world’s leading providers of database software, enterprise applications, and cloud services.[4]
Beyond his formal titles, Ellison is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in enterprise technology, known for his aggressive competitive style and long-term bets on databases, integrated software suites, and now cloud and AI infrastructure.[4] His prominence in business is matched by his status as one of the richest individuals in the world, a position driven primarily by his large ownership stake in Oracle.[1]
Ellison’s AI and Cloud Strategy at Oracle
Ellison’s current focus is on turning Oracle into a foundational platform for artificial intelligence, combining large-scale cloud infrastructure with specialized AI data platforms and industry-specific applications.[2] Under his leadership, Oracle is building massive GPU-based data centers and "world-scale" AI clusters designed to train and run multimodal AI models that can process text, images, and other data types for enterprise use cases.[2]
A central element of his strategy is enabling AI to securely reason over both public information and private enterprise data without compromising confidentiality.[2] This has led to offerings such as the Oracle AI Database and AI Data Platform, which allow organizations to vectorize and connect data from Oracle Cloud and even other clouds, then use AI agents and retrieval-augmented generation techniques to automate complex workflows.[2] Ellison presents this integrated stack—cloud infrastructure, data, and applications—as Oracle’s key advantage in the competitive AI and cloud market.[2]
Wealth, Influence, and Global Impact
The success of Oracle’s AI and cloud initiatives has dramatically boosted Ellison’s net worth, driven by a surge in Oracle’s share price.[1] In 2025 his fortune grew by nearly $200 billion, reaching close to $400 billion and placing him among the very richest people on the planet, ahead of many other well-known tech billionaires.[1] This extraordinary increase reflects investor expectations that Oracle will play a critical role in building and operating the infrastructure behind the global AI boom.[1]
Inside Oracle, Ellison maintains substantial operational control. Following a CEO transition in 2025, organizational charts showed that about 64,000 employees—around 40% of Oracle’s workforce—reported directly into areas overseen by him, underscoring his continuing hands-on role in product and engineering.[3] Through his wealth, ownership stake, and strategic direction of Oracle’s AI and cloud platforms, Ellison now exerts outsized influence not only over the future of enterprise technology but also over how AI will be deployed across healthcare, finance, government, and other critical sectors worldwide.[2][3]