Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American businessman who co-founded the database company that became Oracle Corporation in 1977. He served as Oracle's chief executive until September 2014 and is now its executive chairman and chief technology officer.^[1][2] Oracle's 2025 proxy statement identified Ellison as its largest shareholder, with beneficial ownership of 1,158,232,353 shares, or 40.6 percent, as of September 19, 2025.^[3]

Ellison's relevance to artificial intelligence comes from Oracle's expansion of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), its role in the Stargate Project, and its large supply relationship with OpenAI. Oracle lists Ellison as executive chairman and chief technology officer. The projects below are corporate and partner commitments, not personal projects.^[2]

Background and Oracle career

Ellison was born in New York City and raised in Chicago. He attended the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago without earning a degree, then moved to California and worked as a programmer at Ampex and Amdahl.^[1] In a Smithsonian oral history, he recalled recognizing a commercial opportunity in relational databases after reading about IBM's System R research. Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates founded Software Development Laboratories with a total investment of $2,000.^[4][5]

The company introduced Oracle V2 in 1979, despite there having been no V1. It changed its name to Relational Software in 1979 and later to Oracle Systems Corporation, taking the name of its database product.^[1][5] Ellison remained chief executive as Oracle grew from a database supplier into an enterprise software company.

On September 18, 2014, Oracle's board appointed Ellison executive chairman and chief technology officer as Safra Catz and Mark Hurd became co-chief executives. Software and hardware engineering continued to report to Ellison under that arrangement.^[6] Oracle later made Catz sole chief executive, and in September 2025 appointed Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as co-chief executives while Catz became executive vice chair.^[7]

Oracle's $28.3 billion acquisition of the electronic health records company Cerner closed in June 2022, and Oracle now operates the business as Oracle Health.^[8] Outside Oracle, Ellison served on Tesla's board from December 2018 until the company's August 2022 annual meeting, when he did not stand for re-election.^[9]

Oracle cloud and AI infrastructure

Demand for computing capacity for model training and inference made OCI central to Oracle's strategy in the mid-2020s. Oracle presented the infrastructure buildout together with a second effort: making its databases available inside competing cloud platforms so that customers could apply models to data without moving it between providers.^[10]

At its fiscal 2026 first-quarter results on September 9, 2025, Oracle reported $455 billion in remaining performance obligations, up 359 percent from a year earlier. Management forecast OCI revenue of $18 billion for fiscal 2026 and then $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion, and $144 billion over the next four fiscal years.^[10] Those later figures were forecasts, not reported revenue. Ellison also said Oracle's database revenue through Amazon, Google, and Microsoft cloud services had grown 1,529 percent from the prior-year quarter. He described an Oracle AI Database service intended to let customers apply models such as Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grok directly to Oracle data.^[10]

On October 14, 2025, Oracle announced OCI Zettascale10, an architecture intended to connect hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs across multiple data centers. Oracle said initial deployments planned for the second half of 2026 would target up to 800,000 GPUs.^[11] The 800,000 figure was therefore a capacity target, not a count of installed or operating GPUs.

Oracle's fiscal 2026 results, released on June 10, 2026, showed rapid infrastructure growth alongside heavy financing needs.^[12]

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Remaining performance obligations are contracted revenue that Oracle has not yet recognized, not current revenue. Oracle said most of the increase during its third and fourth fiscal quarters came from large-scale AI contracts, but its annual filing did not allocate the $638 billion balance among named customers.^[12][13] The company also said prepaid and customer-supplied hardware associated with large contracts totaled $75 billion, reducing the portion of infrastructure that Oracle had to finance itself.^[12]

The expansion created concentration and execution risk as well as growth. On July 9, 2026, S&P Global Ratings lowered Oracle's issuer credit rating from BBB to BBB-, the lowest investment-grade tier. S&P cited rising capital spending, an uncertain path to profitability for AI infrastructure, and customer concentration; it estimated that OpenAI accounted for roughly half of Oracle's remaining performance obligations.^[14] That estimate was an outside credit assessment, not a customer breakdown disclosed by Oracle.

Stargate and the OpenAI relationship

Ellison joined Sam Altman and Masayoshi Son at the White House on January 21, 2025, to announce Stargate. OpenAI described the project as a new company intending to invest $500 billion in United States AI infrastructure over four years, with $100 billion to be deployed immediately. SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX were listed as initial equity funders; Oracle was also an initial technology partner. Son was named chairman, SoftBank was assigned financial responsibility, and OpenAI was assigned operational responsibility.^[15]

At the announcement, Ellison said the first Texas campus had ten half-million-square-foot buildings under construction, with plans for as many as twenty. The site became Stargate's first campus in Abilene.^[16] In July 2025, OpenAI and Oracle announced an agreement to develop up to 4.5 gigawatts of additional capacity. OpenAI said that, together with Abilene, this represented more than 5 gigawatts of Stargate capacity under development, which was planned to run more than 2 million chips. It also said part of the Abilene facility was operating, Oracle had begun delivering NVIDIA GB200 racks, and early training and inference workloads were running.^[17]

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The commercial relationship was described at different levels of specificity. On September 10, 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI had agreed to buy about $300 billion of Oracle computing capacity over five years beginning in 2027; Reuters reported the same details while attributing them to the Journal.^[18][19] On September 23, OpenAI publicly described its Oracle partnership as exceeding $300 billion over five years.^[20] OpenAI's statement confirmed the approximate scale and duration of the partnership, but did not confirm the reported 2027 start date or payment schedule. Oracle's public filings did not assign an exact contract value to OpenAI.^[12][13]

OpenAI announced another Stargate campus of more than 1 gigawatt in Saline Township, Michigan, in October 2025 and said construction began on June 1, 2026.^[21][22] Michigan regulators had conditionally approved electricity contracts for a 1,383-megawatt load in December 2025 and identified the customer, Green Chile Ventures LLC, as an Oracle subsidiary.^[23] As of July 2026, the records established the location, planned scale, and start of construction, but not operation of the full campus.

Other technology and policy roles

Oracle's involvement with TikTok began before its current US ownership structure. In September 2020, Oracle announced that it had been selected as TikTok's secure cloud provider under a proposal that would also have given Oracle a 12.5 percent stake in a new TikTok Global entity.^[24] That proposal did not become the later operating structure.

The issue returned in 2025. A September executive order required the proposed United States entity to be majority owned and controlled by US persons, limited ByteDance to less than 20 percent ownership, and required protected US user data to be stored with a US cloud provider. The order also called for the recommendation algorithm to be retrained and monitored under the new security arrangement.^[25]

TikTok announced TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC in January 2026 and said Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX each held 15 percent, while ByteDance retained 19.9 percent. It named Oracle as a trusted security partner responsible for US cloud storage and parts of source-code review, and Oracle executive Kenneth Glueck took one of seven board seats.^[26] Oracle's subsequent quarterly filing recorded its 15 percent interest as an equity-method investment.^[27] These were Oracle corporate responsibilities, not personal duties assigned to Ellison.

On March 25, 2026, President Donald Trump appointed Ellison to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The council was co-chaired by David Sacks and Michael Kratsios. Other appointees included Safra Catz, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Sergey Brin, and Michael Dell.^[28]

Public statements on AI

At Oracle's September 2024 financial analyst meeting, Ellison predicted that police body cameras, vehicle cameras, and drones would feed continuous video to AI systems. He said AI would supervise police officers, report perceived problems to supervisors, and allow a drone to follow a fleeing vehicle instead of a police pursuit. He also said that "citizens will be on their best behavior" because activity would be recorded and reported.^[29][30] Ellison presented this as a future public-safety system, not as an account of a deployed Oracle product. The remarks drew criticism over privacy, automated reporting, and the risks of continuous monitoring.^[30]

At the Stargate announcement, Ellison argued that AI applied to electronic health records could improve treatment decisions. He also described blood tests for early cancer detection and personalized mRNA cancer vaccines that could be designed and manufactured in about 48 hours.^[16] The vaccine claim was framed as a prospective capability. As of July 28, 2026, the National Cancer Institute listed an active phase I/II RNA PRIME study using a personalized tumor-mRNA vaccine, indicating clinical investigation rather than routine treatment.^[31]

Oracle's own fiscal 2026 statement was narrower. It said a new AI version of the Cerner patient-care management system would be available soon, but did not describe a deployed cancer-vaccine system or evidence for a 48-hour production cycle.^[12] By July 2026, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported that its Federal Electronic Health Record was live at 14 medical centers.^[32] That operating footprint does not establish Ellison's broader medical predictions. The Government Accountability Office reported a 20-month deployment pause following user concerns, continuing dissatisfaction in 2024 surveys, and system-performance work that remained incomplete.^[33]

Ownership and wealth

Ellison's large Oracle holding makes estimates of his wealth especially sensitive to the company's share price. Oracle's September 9, 2025 results reported four multibillion-dollar contracts and the increase to $455 billion in remaining performance obligations.^[10] The next day, Oracle shares rose by more than a third. The Associated Press reported that Bloomberg's index briefly placed Ellison ahead of Elon Musk before Musk returned to the top position by the market close.^[34]

By the close, the Associated Press reported Bloomberg estimates of $384.2 billion for Musk and $383.2 billion for Ellison, a difference of $1 billion.^[34] Those were dated asset estimates, not cash holdings, and the intraday reversal showed why a real-time wealth figure can quickly become obsolete.

See also

• Oracle
• Stargate Project
• OpenAI
• Hyperscaler
• Abilene data center
• AI infrastructure

References

1. ^Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Larry Ellison." britannica.com/...Larry-Ellison
2. ^Oracle, "Larry Ellison, Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer." oracle.com/...larry-ellison
3. ^Oracle Corporation, 2025 proxy statement, beneficial ownership table as of September 19, 2025. sec.gov/...d72066ddef14a
4. ^Smithsonian Institution, "An Interview with Larry Ellison." americanhistory.si.edu/...le1
5. ^Computer History Museum, "Selling the Relational Model." computerhistory.org/...265
6. ^Oracle, "Oracle Board Appoints Larry Ellison Executive Chairman and CTO," September 18, 2014. investor.oracle.com/...default
7. ^Oracle, "Oracle Corporation Announces Promotion of Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia to CEOs; Safra Catz Appointed Executive Vice Chair of the Board of Directors," September 22, 2025. investor.oracle.com/...default
8. ^Oracle, "Oracle buys Cerner," transaction record updated June 8, 2022. oracle.com/...cerner
9. ^Tesla, preliminary proxy statement for the August 4, 2022 annual meeting, filed June 23, 2022. sec.gov/...tsla-pre14a_20220804
10. ^Oracle, "Oracle Announces Fiscal Year 2026 First Quarter Financial Results," September 9, 2025. investor.oracle.com/...default
11. ^Oracle, "Oracle Unveils Next-Generation Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Zettascale10 Cluster for AI," October 14, 2025. oracle.com/...ttascale10-cluster-for-ai-2025-10-14
12. ^Oracle Corporation, "Oracle Announces Record Q4 and FY 2026 Results Driven by Cloud Infrastructure and Cloud Applications," Exhibit 99.1, June 10, 2026. sec.gov/...orcl-ex99_1
13. ^Oracle Corporation, Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2026. sec.gov/...orcl-20260531
14. ^S&P Global Ratings, "Oracle Corp. Downgraded To 'BBB-/A-3' From 'BBB/A-2' On Rising Business Risk And Weaker Cash Flow; Outlook Stable," July 9, 2026. spglobal.com/...3592348
15. ^OpenAI, "Announcing The Stargate Project," January 21, 2025. openai.com/...announcing-the-stargate-project
16. ^US Government Publishing Office, "Remarks on Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Development and an Exchange With Reporters," January 21, 2025. govinfo.gov/...DCPD-202500157
17. ^OpenAI, "Stargate advances with 4.5 GW partnership with Oracle," July 22, 2025. openai.com/...dvances-with-partnership-with-oracle
18. ^The Wall Street Journal, "Oracle, OpenAI Sign $300 Billion Cloud Deal," September 10, 2025. wsj.com/...-deal-among-biggest-in-history-ff27c8fe
19. ^Reuters, "OpenAI, Oracle sign $300 billion computing deal, WSJ reports," September 10, 2025. reuters.com/...mputing-deal-wsj-reports-2025-09-10
20. ^OpenAI, "OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank expand Stargate with five new AI data center sites," September 23, 2025. openai.com/...five-new-stargate-sites
21. ^OpenAI, "Expanding Stargate to Michigan," October 30, 2025. openai.com/...expanding-stargate-to-michigan
22. ^OpenAI, "Building the infrastructure for the Intelligence Age in Michigan," June 1, 2026. openai.com/...stargate-michigan-data-center
23. ^Michigan Public Service Commission, "MPSC approves DTE Electric energy contracts for data center," December 18, 2025. michigan.gov/...c-energy-contracts-for-data-center
24. ^Oracle, "Oracle Chosen as TikTok's Secure Cloud Provider," September 19, 2020. oracle.com/...-tiktok-secure-cloud-provider-091920
25. ^The White House, Executive Order 14352, "Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security," September 25, 2025. whitehouse.gov/...ile-protecting-national-security
26. ^TikTok, "Announcement from the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC," January 23, 2026. newsroom.tiktok.com/...ktok-usds-joint-venture-llc
27. ^Oracle Corporation, Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended February 28, 2026. sec.gov/...orcl-20260228
28. ^The White House, "President Trump Announces Appointments to President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology," March 25, 2026. whitehouse.gov/...visors-on-science-and-technology
29. ^Oracle, "Financial Analyst Meeting 2024," September 12, 2024. oracle.com/...financial-analyst-meeting-2024
30. ^TechCrunch, "Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison says that AI will someday track your every move," September 16, 2024. techcrunch.com/...ll-someday-track-your-every-move
31. ^National Cancer Institute, "A Vaccine (RNA-LP) for the Treatment of Recurrent Pediatric High-Grade Glioma and Recurrent Osteosarcoma, RNA PRIME Trial," active phase I/II study, accessed July 28, 2026. cancer.gov/...clinical-trials-search
32. ^US Department of Veterans Affairs, "EHR deployment schedule," updated July 27, 2026. digital.va.gov/...ehr-deployment-schedule
33. ^US Government Accountability Office, "Electronic Health Records: VA Making Incremental Improvements in New System but Needs Updated Cost Estimate and Schedule," March 12, 2025. gao.gov/...gao-25-106874
34. ^Associated Press, "Musk loses crown as the world's richest person to Larry Ellison and then snatches it back," September 10, 2025. apnews.com/...e90a3cab2a0b256923ca55814893f9fe