Larry Ellison, Not Elon Musk, Was The Tech Titan Who Defined 2025

As the year began, a billionaire with close ties to the White House was key to the most newsworthy tech giant of 2025. But 12 chaotic months later, Larry Ellison, not Elon Musk, can rightfully lay claim to the title.

The 81-year-old co-founder and chairman of Oracle Corp. has been omnipresent; It played a role in nearly every big business story of the year, from the crazy AI boom to the giant deals that shook Hollywood. Oracle even plans to buy a stake in TikTok as part of a somewhat far-fetched plan to help Donald Trump save the popular video app. Meanwhile, Ellison’s fortune rose and fell with Oracle’s stock price; This was the firing line of a volatile era.

The year started with Stargate, perhaps the most audacious data center project of them all. On January 21, a day after Trump’s inauguration, the president met with Ellison, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SoftBank Group Corp. He came to the White House with his chief Masayoshi Son to announce a $500 billion plan to build artificial intelligence infrastructure. Many superlatives were spilled that day – 100,000 jobs! – and some skeptics thought that huge sum was aspirational.

Oracle embarked on a historic buildout of AI-optimized data centers that has since progressed faster than expected. This effort caused the company’s cash flow to go negative for the first time since the early 1990s. But Ellison, who made the cloud computing revolution famous 15 years ago, has suddenly become an artificial intelligence expert.

Over the summer, OpenAI signed a deal worth nearly $300 billion to lease massive amounts of computing from Oracle, building out its leading AI lab to become Oracle’s largest customer.

Investors swooned when Oracle announced the full size of its OpenAI business in September. Ellison’s net worth increased by $89 billion in one day to $388 billion; This was the biggest single-day increase for the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This briefly made him the richest person in the world, surpassing Musk.

His ballooning fortune dovetailed nicely with his son David’s desire to become a Hollywood mogul. In August, David Ellison’s Skydance Media finally signed a deal to take control of Paramount, an acquisition largely financed by Ellison Senior.

Weeks after signing the Paramount deal, David Ellison set his sights on Warner Bros., which was bidding to take over the home of Batman, Harry Potter and Bugs Bunny. He turned it into Discovery Inc. His father offered to help finance the deal and personally contacted Warner Bros. He made an offer to his managers.

It was of no use. Warner Bros. turned down Paramount Skydance’s offer and accepted Netflix Inc.’s offer instead. Young Ellison responded with a hostile offer; this was a move his father made to acquire software company PeopleSoft in the early 2000s. Paramount’s second offer was rejected because it cast doubt on Warner Bros.’ ability to match the equity portion of the company’s offer. In response, Larry Ellison agreed to personally guarantee $40.4 billion in financing.

This is a lot of money even for him. In recent months, Ellison’s fortune has dwindled; This reflects the decline in Oracle’s share price. Many investors have become skeptical about AI spending in general and think Oracle is particularly vulnerable compared to its peers because Oracle has accumulated so much debt to finance its data center building spree and is relying on OpenAI for much of its future business.

Ellison is currently the fifth richest person in the world, with a net worth of less than $250 billion. So he has enough assets to cover the warranty many times over. But its high concentration in Oracle shares means it’s unclear how much cash it can hand out immediately if asked to provide the full $40.4 billion return, raising the possibility of selling shares or pledging additional shares.

Before 2025, Ellison used his money mostly to collect trophies, including airplanes, sailboats, Malibu real estate and much of the Hawaiian island of Lanai. He dabbled in Hollywood by supporting his children’s films. His fortune is now tied to the highly contentious AI market and an unproven, debt-laden media company led by his son.

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