Just a few months ago, Larry Ellison woke up as the richest man in the world. September 2025, day 10: his net worth soared to $393 billion in a single day. Overtaking Elon Musk from the throne he had held for a long time. All thanks to four contracts announced by Oracle, including a $300 billion collaboration with OpenAI. Shares skyrocketed 40% in one day. Something unseen since 1992.

But what fascinates me about Larry Ellison today isn’t just the number. It’s how he got there.

Let’s start from the beginning: orphaned and abandoned by his mother at nine months old, raised by an aunt in Chicago with limited resources. He attended two universities but didn’t graduate. He moved to Berkeley in the '70s because “people there seemed freer and smarter.” He worked as a freelance programmer until he joined Ampex and participated in a CIA project on efficient databases.

In 1977, with $2,000 in his pocket (, including $1,200 of his own ), he founded a small software company with two colleagues. They took the name from the CIA project and turned it into a commercial product: Oracle. Listed on Nasdaq in 1986. Ellison didn’t invent databases, but he understood their market value before anyone else and had the courage to put everything into it.

For forty years, he led the company with a rebellious personality and fierce competitiveness. He nearly didn’t survive a surfing accident in 1992, but he returned to the company without missing a beat. Meanwhile, cloud computing exploded, and Oracle lagged behind Amazon and Microsoft. But thanks to its databases and deep understanding of enterprise clients, it maintained a unique position.

Then came generative AI. Summer 2025: Oracle laid off thousands in traditional departments and doubled investments in data centers and AI infrastructure. It became one of the leading providers just as the market went crazy for infrastructure demand. The ‘old’ software guy transformed into an outsider of AI infrastructure. And the market rewarded him.

On a personal level, Ellison is not one to stop. He owns 98% of Lanai Island in Hawaii, won the America’s Cup in 2013 with his sailing team, and founded SailGP, which attracts stars like Mbappé. In 2018, he told an ex-executive that in the '90s and 2000s, he trained hours a day, drank only water and green tea, and followed a strict diet. At 81, he looks twenty years younger than his peers.

In 2024, he quietly married Jolin Zhu, a Chinese woman 47 years his junior. The news came from a university document. Someone joked that Ellison loves both surfing and love. For him, both seem equally irresistible.

His son David bought Paramount Global for $8.6 billion ( from family funds ). The father dominates Silicon Valley, the son dominates Hollywood. Two generations building an empire across technology and media.

What strikes me about Ellison today is his consistency. He’s not a person who changes with the winds. He was a rebel in his youth, and he remains a rebel. He has always chosen to stay alone, think independently, and not be influenced. In 2010, he signed the Giving Pledge promising to donate 95% of his wealth, but unlike Gates and Buffett, he prefers to act alone. He donated $200 million to USC for a cancer research center, and founded the Ellison Institute of Technology with Oxford for medicine, nutrition, and climate.

His philanthropy is personal, not collective. He doesn’t want to join others; he wants to shape the future according to his vision.

At 81, he is finally the world’s richest man. Starting from a CIA contract, he built a global database empire, recognized the value of AI before anyone else, and secured a leading role in the new era. It’s not a late comeback; it’s a comeback that was always there, waiting for the right moment.

The throne of the world’s richest could change again tomorrow. But for now, Larry Ellison has proven that the old giants of technology are not finished yet. In fact, they are just starting to play seriously.