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He is richer than Zuckerberg, lives like a Bond villain, and yet very few know him.
Larry Ellison, 80, co-founder of software giant Oracle, is the world's second-richest person with a net worth of $297 billion, according to Forbes. While Elon Musk builds rockets and Jeff Bezos runs media empires, Ellison prefers to rule from behind the scenes over yachts, islands, mansions, Hollywood and high-performance cruising.
Larry Ellison's former megayacht "Rising Sun" was 138 meters long, so long that it had to be parked next to oil tankers. Now he has a smaller model: an 88-meter luxury samurai named Musashi.
In California, Ellison built a palace in the style of a Japanese imperial garden for over $100 million including waterfalls, a lunar pavilion and 60 tons of imported stone.
In 2012, Ellison bought 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai (population approximately 3,100), along with two resorts and golf courses. Estimated price: $300 million to $500 million. He owns other luxury properties in Malibu, Palm Springs, Lake Tahoe and Japan.
His mother, Florence Ellison, left Larry with his aunt, who raised him. He dropped out of college. At age 33, he founded the software company Oracle and built it into a technology giant for four decades. He still serves as its chief technology officer and chairman of the board.
With about 40 percent of Oracle's shares, it is the main beneficiary of the recent artificial intelligence boom. The company is considered one of the big winners of OpenAI and ChatGPT: billion-dollar contracts for cloud servers, mega-deals with Microsoft, the US and Saudi Arabia.
Ellison served on Tesla's board from 2018 to 2022, is a close friend of Elon Musk and is considered a Trump supporter. His son, David, also a billionaire, owns the Hollywood conglomerate Paramount. The US government approved the deal after political concessions (including the end of Stephen Colbert's late-night show against Trump).
With his Oracle team, Ellison won the America's Cup twice and then founded SailGP, a global Formula 1 for sailing. High-tech catamarans race through the water at 100 km/h, financed and run by Ellison as a global Netflix show starring pop stars. Celebrity investors such as Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and Ryan Reynolds now own stakes in the national teams in the SailGP series.
Ellison was married at least four times; his children Megan and David (from his third marriage to Barbara Boothe) produced successful films in Hollywood. He himself regularly appeared in the gossip press with younger partners.
The phone message from Oracle in the 1990s is legendary: "Press 3 if you want to fill the void in Larry's life." According to US media, Ellison is currently married to Jolin Zhu, who is in his fifth marriage, but there is no official confirmation.
He owns fighter jets (although the government has banned him from trying to import a decommissioned MiG-29 fighter jet into the US), has spied on Microsoft, publicly insulted SAP, called Google's founders "evil," and once called Steve Jobs his best friend.
Why doesn't anyone know him?
While Musk tweets and Bezos improves his speeches, Ellison quietly works to gain influence in technology, politics, media, real estate and sports.
Ellison is the ghost of the tech elite: powerful, extravagant, elegant, eccentric. And the second richest person no one knows.
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