Larry Ellison has become the richest man in the world, even if only for a day: Elon Musk has become one overlooking one billion Ellison. The fortune of the 81 -year -old touched 393 billion dollars on September 10, 2025, thanks to a historical leap of Oracle’s actions, the company he himself founded almost fifty years ago, recording an increase of over 100 billion less than 24 hours. A surgery driven by the agreement with Openai, who confirms the increasingly central role of Oracle in the sector of artificial intelligence and data management. To understand how a child born in New York in 1944 came to dominate Wall Street and the Tech market, it is necessary to retrace part of his life, a path made of intuitions, risks, extralavous passions and the six failed weddings: all things that made him one of the most controversial and influential characters of Silicon Valley. During the article we will see not only his entrepreneurial ascent, but also his relationships with politics, his personal investments and the human side of a man who, at 81 years old, continues to play a leading role.
Who is Larry Ellison
Lawrence Joseph Ellison, this is his full name, was born on August 17, 1944 in the Bronx in New York. Larry didn’t have a simple childhood. Her biological mother, Florence Spellman, was a 19 -year -old girl, while her father was an American aviator of Italian origins, back from the Second World War. Not being able to keep him, after only nine months the mother decided to entrust him to her sister Lillian and her husband Louis Ellison, who lived in Chicago. Just from the latter Larry took on the surname that made him famous.
Raised in a small apartment in the South Shore district, in an area inhabited by the Middle-Bassa, Ellison developed a strong link with the adoptive mother, while the relationship with the father was more complex: the man was severe and often called him a “good good”. Despite a good performance at school, Larry showed little interest in academic rules and ended up abandoning his university studies twice: first at the University of Illinois and then in Chicago, also due to the death of the adoptive mother. It will be in that period that he met Chuck Weiss, a friend destined to introduce him to the world then emerging from information technology. In all this, it will only be at 48 that Larry will meet the biological mother for the first time.
Larry’s personal misadventures have not ended with his family of origin, given his sentimental life to say the least eventful, who saw Ellison collect six marriages. His first union dates back to 1967 with Adda Quinn, followed in 1977 by a very short wedding (just one year) with Nancy Wheeler Jenkins. In 1983 he married Barbara Boothe, a former receptionist, from whom he had two children: Megan, today a film producer with his Annapurno Picturesand David, founder of the Skydance Productionsbecome over time Skydance Media. In 2003 he married the writer Melanie Craft, in an immortalized wedding none other than Steve Jobs: Apple’s co-founder was in fact a great friend of Ellison and, on that occasion, he acted as an exceptional photographer. In the following years he had a long relationship with the Ukrainian actress and model Nikita Kahn, with whom she married in 2010. Finally, in 2024, already eighty -year -old, Ellison joined in marriage with Jolin (born Zhu), known at the time when she was a student at the University of Michigan.
The birth of Oracle
Given Ellison’s love difficulties, it is not an exaggeration to say that his most lasting love was the one for Oracle: the company that made him famous. In the 70s Ellison had various experiences in technological companies such as Amydahl and Ampex. It was precisely to Ampex that he worked on a database commissioned by the CIA, a project that took the name of “Oracle”. The basic idea was inspired by the theories of Edgar F. Codd on relational databases, i.e. systems capable of organizing large quantities of data in tables connected to each other, simplifying access and analysis of information. In 1977 Ellison invested $ 1,200, together with two other partners (Bob Miner and Etes), to found the Software Development Laboratories. After a first phase of reorganization, the company changed its name several times until it became, in 1982, Oracle Systems Corporation. Six years after his foundation, then, Oracle made his stock exchange debut.
Oracle’s growth was not linear. Just think that in 1990 the company fired about 10% of the workforce because of a commercial strategy defined as up-French: the sellers pushed customers to buy large volumes of licenses in advance, inflating the numbers of the quarters, but generating serious problems when sales did not materialize. Ellison himself called that episode a “Incredible business error». Since then, despite alternate phases, a crucial actor has remained in the software and services for businesses. Today its data centers are requested by reality such as Openai and Nvidia.
Currently, Ellison has about 40% of Oracle, a share that multiplied its assets during the last race for artificial intelligence. When on 10 September 2025 the shares of the company grew by more than 40% in one day, its personal wealth recorded an increase of over 100 billion less than 24 hours: an event almost unprecedented!
Ellison was CEO of Oracle until 2014, when he decided to pass the witness to remain an executive president and technical director, two roles he still holds today. His ability to focus on cloud computing – a model in which digital services are provided via the Internet instead of through local infrastructures – and on the infrastructures necessary for AI has proved decisive to keep the competitive Oracle in front of the Microsoft and Amazon giants.
The other passions of Ellison
In addition to the business, Ellison has built a personal empire. In 2012 he purchased 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai for 300 million dollars, transforming it into a sort of private sustainability laboratory. He is also a passionate sailor: with the Oracle team he won the America’s Cup in 2013 and in 2018 he co-founded Sailgp, an international league of high-speed catamarans. Tennis also appear among its hobbies (it is the owner of the Indian Wells tournament, known as “Quinto Slam”) and the planes (owns the pilot’s patent and has several private jets).
