While the likes of Elon Musk, Tim Cook and other business giants dominate the headlines on a regular basis, one name has cropped up more often of late: Larry Ellison.
And with good reason.
The 81-year-old American briefly usurped Mr Musk as the world’s richest person last month and now he’s among the group of investors revealed by Donald Trump who are set to buy out TikTok’s US assets.
So who is Larry Ellison and where does his vast fortune stem from?
How much is Larry Ellison worth?
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is a daily updated list of the richest 500 people on the planet.
There, Ellison is noted as having a personal net worth of $349bn (£259bn).
That puts him second on the list overall, though his worth has increased across 2025 by $157bn – by far the biggest jump on the entire list this year. Mark Zuckerberg is third on the rich list, with Elon Musk top with $470bn.
Ellison signed the Giving Pledge in 2010, promising that charitable causes would get at least 95 percent of his wealth. At the time he said he had “already given hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research and education, and I will give billions more over time.”
Software superpower: Oracle
In the 1970s, Larry Ellison co-founded the company which would become Oracle.
The name change came the following decade and the software company has – through plenty of ups and downs – become one of the most valuable American public companies today, with a market capitalisation of $885bn (£655bn).
Having retained possession of his shares in the company across the ensuing decades – and earning plenty more through stock options and earnings – Ellison owns more than 1.1bn shares of Oracle stock.
That’s equivalent to around 41 per cent of the company’s total outstanding shares, per CNBC.
It was just early September, however, when a stock price surge took Ellison’s fortune to the brink of the biggest in the world. In the course of a day, Oracle shares rose by more than a third (36 per cent) to briefly see him supplant Musk to hold the highest personal net worth. By the following day Tesla shares had in turn rose, making Musk No1 once more.
The Oracle co-founder stepped down as CEO in 2014, remaining now the executive chairman and chief technology officer.
Investment stakes in Tesla and more
Ellison’s investments are far from just limited to Oracle.
He has been an early investor in plenty of tech-related startups, with a notable stake in the aforementioned Tesla that Bloomberg value at more than $19bn alone.
Additionally, he pledged a reported $2bn to Elon Musk taking X, then Twitter, private.
He also reportedly has huge real estate investments, including buying the Hawaiian island of Lana’i, which he owns 98 per cent of.
Add in cars, luxury property and even vintage jets and his wealth is spread across a large portfolio of assets. As far back as 2000 there’s evidence of him investing in tech startups, a popular theme across the industry today.
He mentioned in a rare 2012 interview that he regularly has a $4bn line of credit open in case something “catches his eye”, such as a major investment or outright purchase.
Sports and entertainment
Outside of Oracle, his most notable regular involvements over the past decade or so have come across sports teams, sports events and media or entertainment companies.
Ellison co-founded the sailing league SailGP, owns the Indian Wells Tennis Garden and, according to Fortune, he underwrote the biggest college American football signing in history, worth an estimated $12m.
It’s in media where Ellison and has family have started to make regular waves.
His son, David, runs Skydance Media which merged with Paramount for $8bn. Paramount Skydance is now reportedly aiming to buy WarnerBros Discovery. Larry Ellison reportedly provided the financial backing for Skydance, with Forbes claiming he owns nearly 50 per cent of the merged company.
TikTok next stop
Next in line for the legacy appears to be TikTok.
With the US having been negotiating with Chinese owners ByteDance to purchase the US-facing assets of the company, President Trump announced Larry Ellison, along with Dell’s founder Michael Dell and others, as being involved in the purchase.
It’s unclear as yet whether that will be a personal involvement or an investment through Oracle.
Either way his influence continues to be felt across American business and, given the span of his involvement, is likely to be felt by the next generation too.
