From Database Pioneer to Tech Titan: How Larry Ellison's Fifth Marriage and AI Bet Propelled Him to World's Wealthiest

The Unexpected Comeback: When a Software Veteran Became the Richest Person on Earth

When Oracle announced a historic $300 billion five-year partnership with OpenAI in September 2025, few anticipated the magnitude of what would follow. The stock market didn’t just respond positively—it erupted. Oracle’s share price soared more than 40% in a single trading session, marking its best day since 1992. For 81-year-old Larry Ellison, the company’s co-founder and largest shareholder, this translated into something extraordinary: his net worth crossed the $393 billion threshold, officially making him the world’s richest person and dethroning Elon Musk, who was left with $385 billion.

What’s remarkable isn’t just the wealth surge—it’s the timing. After years of being overshadowed by cloud computing competitors Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, Oracle repositioned itself as a critical infrastructure player in the generative AI boom. The market rewarded this pivot handsomely, validating Ellison’s strategic gamble to shift resources from traditional software toward data centers and AI infrastructure.

The Unlikely Origin: From Orphan to Oracle Founder

Ellison’s journey to becoming one of history’s most consequential entrepreneurs is anything but conventional. Born in 1944 in the Bronx to a 19-year-old unmarried mother, he was adopted by his aunt’s family in Chicago at nine months old. His adoptive father was a modest government employee, and the family struggled financially throughout his childhood. Education, too, was turbulent—he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but departed during his second year following his adoptive mother’s death. He briefly attended the University of Chicago before leaving after just one semester.

The formal education system couldn’t hold him, so Ellison embarked on a nomadic period across America, taking sporadic programming positions in Chicago before gravitating toward Berkeley, California. He was drawn to the city’s countercultural spirit and booming technology ecosystem. “People there seemed freer and smarter,” he would later recall. This restlessness eventually brought him to Ampex Corporation in the early 1970s, where he worked as a programmer for a firm specializing in audio, video storage, and data processing.

The turning point arrived through a classified government contract. Ellison participated in designing a database system for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to handle vast information retrieval tasks. The internal project codename was simple: “Oracle.” That nomenclature would later become legendary.

Building an Empire: The Database Revolution

In 1977, Ellison and two colleagues—Bob Miner and Ed Oates—pooled $2,000 (Ellison contributed $1,200) to launch Software Development Laboratories (SDL). Their audacious bet was to commercialize what they’d learned from the CIA project: a relational database system that could serve businesses at scale. They christened their product “Oracle.”

Ellison’s genius wasn’t necessarily inventing database technology—it was recognizing its commercial potential when others didn’t. His competitive nature and rebellious streak propelled him through nearly every leadership position at Oracle. He served as president from 1978 to 1996, chairman from 1990 to 1992, and repeatedly returned to executive roles despite personal crises, including a near-fatal surfing accident in 1992.

When Oracle went public on NASDAQ in 1986, it ascended rapidly in the enterprise software hierarchy. The company’s trajectory through the 1990s and 2000s was volatile, dominating the database market while stumbling initially in the cloud computing race. Yet Oracle’s fortress-like position with enterprise clients and its superior database capabilities kept it central to global information infrastructure. Ellison remained the company’s driving force through all fluctuations, finally stepping down as CEO in 2014 while retaining the Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer titles.

Personal Life: A Fifth Spouse and the Contradictions of a Tech Billionaire

Few aspects of Ellison’s biography rival the attention his romantic life commands. Marriage has been a recurring chapter—and he’s authored five editions. In 2024, the quiet news of his marriage to Jolin Zhu, a Chinese-American woman nearly 47 years his junior, emerged through an unexpected channel: a University of Michigan donation announcement. Zhu, born in Shenyang, China, and educated at Michigan, represented yet another surprising turn in Ellison’s personal saga. The occasion generated considerable social media commentary about his apparent attraction to both literal waves and romantic pursuits.

Beyond matrimonial arrangements, Ellison embodies profound contradictions. His personal wealth has manifested in near-total ownership of Hawaii’s Lanai island, possession of multiple California estates, and custody of some of Earth’s most exclusive yachts. His fixation on water and wind sports borders on obsessive. The 1992 surfing brush with death didn’t extinguish this passion—it merely redirected it toward competitive sailing. His 2013 sponsorship of Oracle Team USA produced one of sailing’s greatest comebacks at the America’s Cup. In 2018, he founded SailGP, an international catamaran racing league that has attracted celebrity investors including actress Anne Hathaway and footballer Kylian Mbappé.

The Discipline Behind the Legend

What contradicts his image as a hedonistic billionaire is his extraordinary self-discipline. According to accounts from his startup executives, Ellison maintained a rigorous daily exercise regimen spanning several hours during the 1990s and 2000s. His dietary habits were ascetic: predominantly water and green tea, with sugary beverages essentially absent. This bodily maintenance has produced remarkable results—at 81, observers frequently describe him as appearing “20 years younger than his chronological peers.”

His tennis enthusiasm led him to revive and reposition the Indian Wells tournament in California, famously marketing it as the “fifth Grand Slam.” For Ellison, athletics transcended mere hobby; it functioned as his longevity prescription, keeping him energetically engaged in business and life.

From Silicon Valley to Hollywood: The Ellison Dynasty Expands

Ellison’s influence increasingly extends beyond his personal achievements. His son, David Ellison, recently orchestrated the $8 billion acquisition of Paramount Global (parent of CBS and MTV), with $6 billion originating from Ellison family capital. This strategic move planted the family flag firmly in Hollywood’s landscape. With father commanding technology and son commanding entertainment, the Ellisons constructed a dual-sector wealth dominion that few dynasties can parallel.

Politically, Ellison has been a formidable Republican donor and strategic supporter. He financed Marco Rubio’s 2015 presidential bid and contributed $15 million to Senator Tim Scott’s Super PAC in 2022. Most symbolically, in January 2025, he appeared at a White House ceremony alongside SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and OpenAI’s Sam Altman to unveil a $500 billion initiative to construct an interconnected AI data center network, with Oracle technology positioned at the infrastructure’s core. The implication extended beyond commerce—it represented power consolidation at the highest governmental levels.

Philanthropy Through a Personal Lens

In 2010, Ellison committed to the Giving Pledge, pledging 95% of his accumulated wealth to charitable purposes. Yet his philanthropic approach diverges markedly from peers like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. He eschews collective action and public collaboration, preferring instead what he described to The New York Times as cherishing “solitude and resistance to outside influence.”

His giving reflects this individualistic philosophy. A 2016 donation of $200 million to the University of Southern California established a cancer research center. More recently, he committed resources to the Ellison Institute of Technology, a partnership with Oxford University investigating healthcare advancement, agricultural efficiency, and climate solutions. His declaration on social media crystallized his vision: “We will engineer a new generation of life-saving pharmaceuticals, construct cost-effective farming systems, and pioneer clean, efficient energy technologies.”

The Legacy of the Prodigal Billionaire

At 81, Larry Ellison stands atop the world’s wealth rankings, not through inherited fortune but through relentless innovation and astute market positioning. His trajectory—from adopted orphan in Chicago to Silicon Valley architect to AI infrastructure visionary—represents the enduring potential of technological leadership. The five marriages, the extreme athletic pursuits, the billion-dollar wagers on emerging technology, the solitary philanthropic vision—these aren’t contradictions in Ellison’s character but rather expressions of a personality fundamentally resistant to constraint.

Oracle’s resurgence in the AI era suggests that technological dynasties established by previous generations haven’t concluded their narratives. As artificial intelligence reshapes industry and society, Ellison and his peers have demonstrated that experience, infrastructure mastery, and willingness to reinvent remain potent competitive advantages. Whether his status as the world’s wealthiest person persists matters less than what it signifies: in an epoch of technological acceleration, the titans who comprehend infrastructure become irreplaceable.