As 2025 begins, a billionaire with close ties to the White House seemed almost certain to be the year's most-watched tech titan. Yet, after a turbulent twelve months, it is Larry Ellison, not Elon Musk, who has the strongest claim to the title. The 81-year-old co-founder and Chairman of Oracle (ORCL.US) has been ubiquitous—from the frenzied AI boom (or bubble) to the blockbuster deals shaking up Hollywood, he played a role in nearly every major business story of the year. Oracle even planned to take a stake in TikTok as part of a convoluted scheme to help former President Trump intervene with the popular video app. Throughout this period, Ellison's fortune fluctuated with Oracle's stock price, creating a "heat curve" reflective of these volatile times.
The year kicked off with "Stargate," perhaps the most ambitious of all data center projects. On January 21st, the day after Trump's inauguration, the President appeared at the White House with Ellison, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son to announce a $500 billion plan for AI infrastructure development. The day was filled with grand pronouncements—"100,000 jobs!"—though some skeptics viewed the colossal sum as more of a lofty vision than a concrete plan. Subsequently, Oracle embarked on a historic, massive expansion of data centers optimized for AI, progressing faster than some had anticipated. This push resulted in the company's cash flow turning negative for the first time since the early 1990s. However, Ellison, who was notorious 15 years ago for missing the cloud computing revolution, suddenly transformed into an AI evangelist.
During the summer, OpenAI signed a deal valued at approximately $300 billion to lease vast computing power from Oracle, making the leading AI lab Oracle's largest customer. In September, when Oracle disclosed the full scale of its OpenAI business, investors cheered. Ellison's net worth surged by an astonishing $89 billion in a single day, reaching $388 billion, marking the largest one-day increase ever recorded by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This briefly propelled him past Musk to become the world's richest person, albeit temporarily. His rapidly swelling fortune perfectly aligned with his son David's ambitions to become a Hollywood mogul.
In August, David Ellison's Skydance Media finally completed a deal to gain control of Paramount, an acquisition largely bankrolled by his father. Just weeks after the Paramount deal closed, David Ellison set his sights on Warner Bros. Discovery, proposing a takeover of the company holding the rights to Batman, Harry Potter, and Bugs Bunny. His father offered to help finance the transaction and personally lobbied Warner Bros. executives. However, the effort proved futile. Warner Bros. rejected the offer from Paramount and Skydance (PSKY.US), opting instead for a bid from Netflix (NFLX.US). The younger Ellison then launched a hostile takeover bid—a tactic his father had employed in the early 2000s with the software company PeopleSoft.
Paramount's second offer was again rejected, with Warner Bros. expressing skepticism about the company's ability to fulfill the equity portion of the bid. In response, Larry Ellison agreed to provide a personal guarantee for the $40.4 billion in financing. Even for him, this was a colossal sum. In recent months, Ellison's wealth has shrunk due to a decline in Oracle's stock price. Many investors remain skeptical about overall AI spending and view Oracle as particularly vulnerable compared to peers, given its massive debt accumulated to fund the data center building spree and its heavy reliance on OpenAI for a significant portion of its future business.
Ellison is currently the world's fifth-richest person, with a net worth just under $250 billion. Consequently, he possesses ample assets to cover the guarantee multiple times over. However, with his wealth highly concentrated in Oracle stock, it remains unclear how much cash he could immediately access if required to back the full $40.4 billion, raising the possibility that he might have to resort to selling shares or pledging more stock. Before 2025, Ellison primarily used his money to collect "trophies"—including airplanes, sailboats, real estate in Malibu, and most of the Hawaiian island of Lanai. He dabbled in Hollywood by backing his children's film projects. Now, his fortune is inextricably linked to the fiercely competitive AI market and a Hollywood studio led by his son.