Larry Ellison is the co-founder, executive chairman, and chief technology officer of Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL), one of the world’s largest enterprise software and cloud computing companies. Born on August 17, 1944, Ellison co-founded Oracle in 1977 and served as its CEO for 37 years before stepping into the CTO and chairman role in September 2014. With a net worth estimated at approximately $245 billion as of early 2026, he ranks among the top three wealthiest people on Earth. Ellison’s fortune is driven primarily by his massive Oracle stake, which represents over 95% of his net worth, along with significant holdings in Tesla. In 2025, he briefly surpassed Elon Musk to become the world’s richest person after Oracle’s stock surged on the back of its booming AI and cloud infrastructure business.

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Larry Ellison – Quick Facts

Oracle Competitors | CEO Email Address & Contact

Oracle’s co-founder Larry Ellison can be contacted via email at [email protected]. He also maintains a Twitter/X account at @larryellison. Oracle Corporation competes in the enterprise software, database, and cloud infrastructure markets. Key competitors include:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) – dominant cloud infrastructure provider
• Microsoft Azure – enterprise cloud and database rival
• IBM – legacy enterprise software and consulting
• SAP – enterprise resource planning (ERP) competitor
• Salesforce – CRM and cloud applications
• Google Cloud Platform – cloud computing and AI services
• Snowflake – cloud data warehousing competitor

Larry Ellison Net Worth 2026 – Oracle CTO Salary

As of early 2026, Larry Ellison’s net worth is estimated at approximately $245 billion USD, according to Forbes, making him one of the three wealthiest people in the world. His wealth is overwhelmingly concentrated in Oracle stock — he owns approximately 1.16 billion shares of Oracle, representing about 40% of the company. This Oracle stake alone accounts for over 95% of his total net worth.

In September 2025, Ellison briefly became the world’s richest person when Oracle’s stock surged over 40% following a blockbuster earnings report and a five-year AI growth projection. His net worth peaked at an estimated $393 billion before Oracle shares pulled back.

Beyond Oracle, Ellison holds a significant stake in Tesla. He originally purchased 3 million shares in 2018 (now approximately 15–45 million shares after stock splits), worth an estimated $19 billion as of mid-2025. He served on Tesla’s board from 2018 to 2022 and remains one of the company’s largest individual shareholders after Elon Musk.

Ellison is also a prominent real estate investor with a portfolio estimated at over $1 billion. His most notable property is Lanai Island in Hawaii, which he purchased for $300 million in 2012. He owns nearly 98% of the island and uses it as a laboratory for sustainable energy, organic farming, and wellness initiatives. Other properties include estates in Woodside, San Francisco, Porcupine Creek (a 246-acre estate in Rancho Mirage), and properties in Lake Tahoe and Newport, Rhode Island.

Larry Ellison Compensation Breakdown (FY2025)

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Oracle Corporation Net Worth 2026 – Is Oracle Profitable?

Yes, Oracle Corporation is highly profitable and has experienced significant growth driven by its cloud infrastructure and AI businesses. Under the leadership of Larry Ellison as CTO and chairman, Oracle has positioned itself as a major player in the AI era with its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) platform.

Oracle Financial Summary (FY2025)

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Career & Education – Company, University, & College

Larry Ellison’s career path is one of the most remarkable in Silicon Valley history — from college dropout to co-founding one of the world’s most valuable technology companies. Below is his complete career timeline:

Larry Ellison Career Timeline

In the early 1970s, after dropping out of college, Ellison moved to Northern California and worked as a programmer at Amdahl Corporation and then at Ampex Corporation, where he was involved in building a database for the CIA codenamed “Oracle.” It was at Ampex that Ellison learned about computer scientist Edgar F. Codd’s groundbreaking research on the relational model for database management, which inspired him to start his own company.

In 1977, Ellison co-founded Software Development Laboratories (later renamed Oracle Corporation) with Bob Miner and Ed Oates, investing just $2,000 of his own money (out of a total $2,400 in seed funding). The company built one of the first commercial relational database management systems and quickly became the dominant database vendor worldwide. By the mid-1980s, Oracle was generating hundreds of millions in revenue, and Ellison became a fixture on the Forbes billionaires list.

Ellison’s leadership style was defined by aggressive acquisitions. Over his CEO tenure, Oracle acquired dozens of companies, including landmark deals for PeopleSoft ($10.3 billion, 2005), BEA Systems ($8.5 billion, 2008), Sun Microsystems ($7.4 billion, 2010), and NetSuite ($9.3 billion, 2016). He also served as a director at Apple Computer from 1997 to 2002, invited by his close friend Steve Jobs after Jobs returned to Apple.

In September 2014, Ellison stepped down as CEO and appointed Safra Catz and Mark Hurd as co-CEOs, while taking on the roles of executive chairman and CTO. After Hurd’s death in 2019, Catz became sole CEO. In September 2025, Oracle restructured its leadership again: Catz was elevated to Executive Vice Chair, and Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia were appointed as co-CEOs. Despite these title changes, Ellison has expanded his operational involvement — he reportedly oversees approximately 64,000 Oracle employees, or about 40% of the workforce.

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Education

Ellison attended South Shore High School in Chicago before enrolling at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was named science student of the year. He dropped out after his second year following the death of his adoptive mother. In 1966, he briefly enrolled at the University of Chicago to study physics and mathematics but left after one semester without completing his exams. Despite never earning a college degree, Ellison went on to build one of the most valuable technology companies in history.

Larry Ellison Wiki – Age, Wife, Family, & More

Larry Ellison (age 81) was born Lawrence Joseph Ellison on August 17, 1944, in New York City. He was born to a 19-year-old unwed mother, Florence Spellman, and an Italian-American U.S. Army Air Corps pilot. When he was just nine months old, Larry contracted pneumonia, and his mother sent him to live with her aunt and uncle, Lillian and Louis Ellison, in Chicago. They formally adopted him. Ellison did not meet his biological mother until he was 48 years old.

Ellison has described his adoptive mother as warm and loving, while his adoptive father Louis — a government employee who also dealt in real estate — was emotionally distant and lost his wealth during the Great Depression. Growing up on Chicago’s South Side in a lower-middle-class household shaped Ellison’s fierce ambition and drive to succeed.

Marriages & Family

Larry Ellison has been married five times:

• Adda Quinn (1967–1974) — first wife
• Nancy Wheeler Jenkins (1977–1978) — second wife
• Barbara Boothe (1983–1986) — mother of his two children
• Melanie Craft (2003–2010) — romance novelist; Steve Jobs was best man at the wedding
• Jolin Zhu (married c. 2024) — a Chinese-American woman, 47 years his junior; the marriage was revealed in November 2024 via a University of Michigan football deal acknowledgment

Ellison has two children from his marriage to Barbara Boothe: David Ellison (born 1983), who founded Skydance Media and is now Chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, and Megan Ellison (born 1986), who founded Annapurna Pictures, the acclaimed production company behind films like Zero Dark Thirty, Her, and American Hustle.

Interests & Lifestyle

Ellison is known for his extravagant lifestyle and passions. He is an avid yachtsman who once owned “Rising Sun,” the 138-meter, $200 million yacht that was the 12th largest in the world (sold during the 2010 financial downturn). He spent an additional $80 million assembling a team to win the America’s Cup sailing race, which Oracle Team USA won in 2010 and defended in 2013.

He is a licensed pilot who owns multiple aircraft, including military fighter jets. He has a deep interest in Japanese culture and built a Japanese-style estate in Woodside, California, modeled after a 16th-century Japanese imperial residence. He made a cameo appearance in the 2010 film Iron Man 2. Ellison also admires Israel for its innovation in the technology field.

Philanthropy

In 2010, Ellison signed The Giving Pledge, committing to donate at least 95% of his wealth to philanthropic causes. His major philanthropic efforts include:

• $200 million to the University of Southern California for a cancer treatment and research center
• Over $1 billion to the Ellison Medical Foundation for aging and infectious disease research (now closed)
• The Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford, UK — a $1.3 billion campus focused on healthcare, food security, climate change, and AI
• $40 billion pledged to back son David Ellison’s Paramount–Skydance merger deal (2025)

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About Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates, Oracle is the world’s second-largest software company by revenue and a leading provider of database technology, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise applications. The company serves over 400,000 customers in more than 175 countries.

Oracle relocated its headquarters from Redwood City, California to Austin, Texas in December 2020. The company trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol ORCL and has a market capitalization of approximately $430 billion as of early 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Article last updated:February 2026March 3, 2026