For decades, Larry Ellison has enlightened by being executive director Silicon Valley, who really knew how to have a good time. He spent up to $ 200 million by building a Japanese inspired imperial villa near Palo Alto in California, bought the sixth largest Hawaiian island and dated and married and divorced with endless zeal.
Few people paid great attention to what his database company Oracle did. Sometimes even Mr. Ellison. In 2013, he did not appear on his main conversation on the annual Oracle convention in San Francisco because he tried to win the American Cup on his yacht, which he did. The biography was called, “The difference between God and Larry Ellison: God does not think that Larry Ellison is.”
With a wealth of $ 175 billion, there is not much for Ellison to buy, which would really fall for his wallet. In 2022 he broke the record in Florida when he bought 22-Acre assets near Palm Beach-only for $ 173 million was the price of one tenth of 1 percent of his wealth. In the same year, he invested $ 1 billion in the receipt of Twitter Elon Muska because he said at that time, “It would be a lot of fun.”
Now 80 years and married for the fifth or maybe six, Mr. Ellison is expanding his ambitions out of fun and surrounding himself with beautiful things. Along the way set by his friend Mr. Musk, who has at least six companies that feed on each other, Mr. Ellison also plans to grow his corporate empire.
Oracle is constantly appearing as a possible candidate for Tiktok, a wildly popular video application ordered by Congress, must avert its ownership by a Chinese Internet company, or be banned in the United States. On Wednesday, President Trump met the best White House officials to discuss the new application structure. The closing of the agreement is Saturday, although Tiktok dates came and left earlier.
Oracle almost became the owner of a minority of American operations Tiktok in 2020, along with Walmart, when concerns about data security increased. An agreement was arranged where Oracle began to store US users’ data in the cloud. Oracle would also owns 12.5 percent New companies, Tiktok Global. The second part, like many tiktok stores, never happened.
Five years later a lot changed, starting with the following: Technical tycoons were relaxed.
Mr. Musk, supported by President Trump, smoked the borders between the public and the private. It blows government agencies and uses its huge wealth to try to influence the elections. It seems that Mr. Ellison, who may be closer to Mr. Trump than any magnate, wants nothing less than to get the Earth under the benevolent rocking of artificial intelligence, which said it will bring reward and harmony.
One society, although as successful as Oracle, might help him approach this goal. However, several can.
Mr. Ellison reports most of his son David to buy Paramount, the owner of the legendary Hollywood studio, CBS, MTV and other real estate that create messages and content. (The agreement still needs regulatory approval.) Tiktok is meanwhile on content production. It has a monthly active user base of 1.5 billion, about a tenth of them in the United States.
And then there is a wild card factor: the proximity of Mr. Ellison towards President Trump. In January, Mr. Ellison was prominently listed in the White House for the announcement of the Stargate project, which will build data centers for artificial intelligence. President Trump was asked if Mr. Musk could buy a tiktok, and he voluntarily applied that “I would like Larry to buy it.”
“All these pieces meet to create something that is not yet clear except this: the Ellison family will be in the center,” said Richard Greenfield, media analyst with Lightshed partners.
The White House, Tiktok, Mr. Ellison and Oracle refused to express or respond to requests for comment. In any case, Mr. Ellison looks down the road. “The only way I know to make me feel better is to improve the world,” Vanity Fair said in 1997, adding, “Don’t confuse it for altruism. It’s Egotism.
Mr. Ellison recently tried to improve the world by promoting the supervisory company. There would be cameras everywhere, with each movement analyzed AI
“Citizens will have their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that is happening,” Oracle Investors said last fall. “It’s unsurpassed.”
Also on the list of tasks, Ellison combines thousands of databases into one huge electronic storage that can benefit from AI that will cure illnesses and repair everything else, told Tony Blair, a former British prime minister, at a symposium of discovering the government in Dubai.
“I think it will cause happier citizenship,” said Ellison, who appeared through the video, to Mr. Blair.
Mr. Ellison’s data search hit failures. In November, the Federal Court of California finally approved a settlement regarding an action accused of Oracle of incorrectly capture and selling online and offline data of individuals without their permission. Oracle agreed to pay $ 115 million without admitting an unlawful conduct.
During the charming flourishing of Mr. Ellison at the age of 90, he gave a significant contrast to what was relatively sober Silicon Valley. He described his style of office as “mockery management”. After Oracle had an experience of almost death, he explained: “Oracle is operated by adolescents. And that includes me.” He told reporters that he was going to start a proxy fight and get control of Apple. He indulged in the long -term, albeit unilateral disputes with Microsoft.
And then there were his wives and girlfriends. “As a veteran of three marriages, do you feel that you can do it better this time?” Playboy asked him in 2002.
“There is no doubt that I can do it better,” Mr. Ellison replied. “Can I do it worse? I don’t think so.”
In 2003 he married Melanie Craft, a romantic novelist who became wife No. 4. Steve Jobs was a wedding photographer. Mrs. Craft wrote “Man Trouble” about a reporter who convinces romance to help him capture an interview with a shy billionaire.
Mr. Ellison’s ideal politician at that time was a democrat. He once joked that the constitution should be changed so that Bill Clinton could have a third term. In the 21st century, Mr. Ellison became more conservative and developed friendship with Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu and recovered against what he saw as an anti-Israeli approach of Barack Obama.
“Bill Clinton was centrist. Tony Blair was centrist. Marco Rubio is centrist. Mitt Romney is centrist. That’s my policy,” Ellison said in 2018.
His policy is now President of Trump, but he gets there for a while. In the 2016 presidential plant, Mr. Ellison supported Mr. Rubio, a Republican senator of Florida and then Trump’s criticism. In 2020, Mr. Trump convinced Mr. Ellison to host the fund on his golf course in South California. Although his name appeared as the only host, Mr. Ellison grinned this event and told people that he was sick.
Four years later, Mr. Trump was again the first election of Mr. Ellison for the president. Mr. Ellison traveled to South Carolina for the presidential speech of Senator Tim Scott, the Republican Republic of South Carolina, where Mr. Scott called billionaires “one of my mentors”.
After Mr. Scott rejected and Mr. Trump needed cash, Mr. Ellison approached the new Republican candidate and dined with him in Mar-A-Lago. It helped that she sometimes lives near her recently purchased house in Florida.
While Mr. Ellison is not in the inner circle of Mr. Trump and did not make public gifts to support the campaign, he appeared in Mar-A-Lago to sit for a temporary meeting.
During the first term of President Trump, Mr. Ellison developed an interest in Tiktok, which led to almost the development between Tiktok, Oracle and Walmart, approved by Mr. Trump.
This time it is not expected that Walmart will be involved. Mr. Ellison’s friend, who did not talk about the attribution so that he could speak honestly, said that the technical tycoon was probably influenced by the ownership of Mr. Musk Twitter, now called X. It is one thing to be rich, a friend said; Mr. Musk is relevant to consumers with the power of culture, politics and the media.
Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle, rather than Mr. Ellison, was, according to a person involved in the process of a negotiator in Tiktok interviews. Even provided Oracle hits some type of agreement with the tiktok, probably does not exclude other owners for the video application, people close to the process said. And it probably will not include an algorithm that has made social media so successful.
Mr. Ellison’s faith in technology is undeveloped. Terry Garnett, the head of Oracle marketing, suffered the fate of many executives Oracle when Mr. Ellison was released in 1994. Mr. Garnett held his resentment for some time, but since then he has come to appreciate his former boss.
“He loves technology at the end of the day,” Mr. Garnett said. “It’s so simple.”
What if Oracle is not a consumer company, and if his most important attempt to attempt to become one – a number of cheap desktops at the end of the 90’s demanding domination of Microsoft software – come across?
“Think about Tiktoku as a video data – unstructured data that fits another cut of this Oracle matrix,” said Mr. Garnett, now a private investor. “Who has data, has power.”
