(Bloomberg) — When the year began, a billionaire with strong ties to the White House was the favorite to be the most-reported tech titan of 2025. But 12 chaotic months later, Larry Ellison, not Elon Musk, can rightfully claim that title.
The 81-year-old co-founder and chairman of Oracle Corp. has been omnipresent — participating in virtually every big business story of the year, from the frenzied artificial intelligence boom (or bubble) to the megadeals roiling Hollywood. Oracle even plans to acquire a stake in TikTok as part of a somewhat devious plan to help Donald Trump save the popular video app. Along the way, Ellison’s fortune fluctuated along with Oracle’s stock price—a bellwether for a volatile era.
The year began with Stargate, perhaps the most audacious data center project of all. On Jan. 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration, the president appeared at the White House with Ellison, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Masayoshi Son, head of SoftBank Group Corp., to announce a $500 billion plan to build AI infrastructure. Many superlatives were used that day — 100,000 jobs! — and some skeptics dismissed the huge sum as aspirational.
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Since then, Oracle has embarked on a historic buildout of AI-optimized data centers that is progressing faster than some expected. The venture made the company’s cash flow negative for the first time since the early 1990s. But Ellison, who famously ignored the cloud computing revolution 15 years ago, suddenly became an AI enthusiast.
Over the summer, OpenAI struck a roughly $300 billion deal to lease massive computing capacity from Oracle, making the leading AI lab Oracle’s biggest customer.
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Investors were excited in September when Oracle disclosed the full scale of its OpenAI business. Ellison’s fortune jumped $89 billion in one day to $388 billion, the largest single-day increase recorded by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This briefly made him the richest person in the world, surpassing Musk.
His growing fortune meshed well with his son David’s aspirations to become a Hollywood mogul. In August, David Ellison’s Skydance Media finally reached a deal to control Paramount, an acquisition largely financed by Ellison Sr.
Weeks after closing the Paramount deal, David set his sights on Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., offering to take over the home of Batman, Harry Potter and Bugs Bunny. His father offered financial assistance and made a personal proposal to Warner Bros. executives.
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But he was unsuccessful. Warner Bros. rejected Paramount Skydance’s offer and accepted Netflix Inc. David responded with a hostile offer — a move his father made in the early 2000s to buy the software company PeopleSoft. Paramount’s second offer was rejected, with Warner Bros. doubting that the company could fulfill the shareholding part of the proposal. In response, Larry Ellison agreed to personally guarantee $40.4 billion in financing.
That’s a lot of money, even for him. In recent months, Ellison’s fortune has declined—reflecting the decline in Oracle’s share price. Many investors are skeptical about AI spending in general and see Oracle as especially vulnerable compared to its peers because it has accumulated a lot of debt to finance its expansion into data centers and relies on OpenAI for a large portion of its future business.
Ellison is currently the fifth richest person in the world, with a net worth just under $250 billion. Therefore, he has enough assets to cover the collateral several times over. However, his high concentration in Oracle shares makes it uncertain how much cash he could make immediately available if called upon to provide the $40.4 billion, raising the possibility that he may need to sell shares or provide more guarantees.
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Before 2025, Ellison used his money primarily to collect trophies — including planes, sailboats, real estate in Malibu and much of the Hawaiian island of Lanai. He also invested in Hollywood by supporting his children’s films. Now his fortune is tied to the fiercely contested AI market and an unproven and debt-ridden media company led by his son.
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