How Larry Ellison Became the World's Wealthiest Man at 81—And Married Again

A Turning Point: When Heritage Meets Headlines

On September 10, 2025, something remarkable happened in the billionaire rankings. According to Bloomberg’s wealth index, an 81-year-old technology pioneer officially claimed the top spot, surpassing long-held assumptions about who would forever dominate the world’s richest list. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder and largest shareholder, watched his net worth reach $393 billion—a staggering $100 billion jump in a single trading session. Elon Musk, the previous record holder, slipped to $385 billion.

But the wealth surge wasn’t the only headline making waves. Earlier that year, the business world discovered something equally intriguing: Ellison had married for the fifth time. The revelation came quietly through a University of Michigan donation announcement listing “Larry Ellison and his wife, Jolin.” The woman behind the name is Jolin Zhu, a Chinese-American professional 47 years Ellison’s junior, adding another chapter to a life that reads more like fiction than biography.

From Rejection to Empire: The Unlikely Path to Silicon Valley Royalty

Ellison’s journey defies the Silicon Valley cliché. Born in 1944 in the Bronx to an unmarried 19-year-old mother, he was given up for adoption at nine months old. His adoptive family in Chicago lived modestly—his father worked as a government employee, and resources were tight. Higher education seemed promising until tragedy struck: his adoptive mother passed away during his sophomore year at the University of Illinois. He attempted to restart at the University of Chicago but quit after a single semester.

The next years saw Ellison drifting across America, taking whatever programming work he could find in Chicago before ultimately migrating to Berkeley, California. He was drawn to the region’s counterculture ethos and emerging tech ecosystem—a place where ambition and unconventional thinking thrived. That attraction proved prophetic.

The Ampex Moment

In the early 1970s, Ellison landed a position at Ampex Corporation, a technology firm focused on audio, video storage, and data processing systems. This job would alter the entire trajectory of his life. At Ampex, he joined a classified initiative: designing a database system for the Central Intelligence Agency to manage and query information more effectively. The project’s internal designation was “Oracle.”

In 1977, Ellison and two former Ampex colleagues—Bob Miner and Ed Oates—pooled their resources. Ellison invested $1,200 of the $2,000 startup capital to launch Software Development Laboratories (SDL). Their ambition was straightforward: commercialize the relational database model they’d refined during the CIA contract work and release it to the broader market under the name “Oracle.”

The calculation proved visionary. While Ellison wasn’t the inventor of database technology itself, he possessed something equally valuable: the foresight to recognize its commercial potential and the audacity to bet everything on it. Oracle went public on NASDAQ in 1986, transforming into an enterprise software juggernaut. Ellison held nearly every leadership role imaginable—president from 1978 to 1996, chairman from 1990 to 1992, and chief executive officer during multiple tenures totaling a decade or more. Even his 1992 near-fatal surfing accident didn’t slow his ambitions.

From Market Leader to Cloud Laggard to AI Kingmaker

For decades, Oracle dominated the database market. Yet the transition to cloud computing revealed vulnerabilities. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure leapfrogged the company during the early cloud era, and for a moment, Oracle seemed destined for obsolescence.

That narrative shifted dramatically in 2025.

The OpenAI Partnership and the $300 Billion Bet

On September 10, 2025, Oracle announced partnerships worth hundreds of billions of dollars, headlined by a five-year, $300 billion commitment from OpenAI. The market response was explosive: Oracle’s stock surged over 40% in a single day—its largest one-day gain since going public in 1986. Suddenly, the company that lagged in cloud computing had positioned itself as indispensable to the generative AI revolution.

The strategic pivot became clear that summer. While Oracle trimmed thousands of employees from its traditional hardware sales and legacy software divisions, it simultaneously accelerated investment in data centers and AI infrastructure. The company recognized a critical gap: generative AI required unprecedented computational capacity, and Oracle’s database expertise—combined with new infrastructure capabilities—made it uniquely positioned to supply this demand.

Industry analysts rebranded the company: from “traditional software vendor” to “dark horse in AI infrastructure.” The market was rewarding not just a comeback, but a reinvention.

The Ellison Family Dynasty: From Silicon Valley to Hollywood

Ellison’s wealth isn’t confined to his personal ledger. His son, David Ellison, orchestrated the acquisition of Paramount Global, CBS and MTV’s parent company, for $8 billion in 2024—with $6 billion sourced from family capital. The purchase marked the Ellison family’s expansion into entertainment and media production, complementing their dominance in technology.

The family empire now spans two industries and two generations. Larry commands Silicon Valley from the executive suite; David influences Hollywood from the studio lot. It’s a wealth diversification strategy that transcends traditional billionaire portfolios.

Politics, Power, and Platform Building

Ellison’s influence extends into the political sphere. He’s long been a Republican donor and strategist. In 2015, he funded Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign; by 2022, he contributed $15 million to South Carolina Senator Tim Scott’s Super PAC. But his most visible political moment came in January 2025, when he appeared at the White House alongside SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to announce the construction of a $500 billion artificial intelligence data center network. Oracle’s technology would form the foundation of this infrastructure—a venture that transcends commerce and enters the realm of national technological strategy.

The Paradox of Discipline and Indulgence

Ellison’s personal life embodies contradiction. He owns 98% of Hawaii’s Lanai island, multiple California properties, and a collection of world-class yachts. He possesses an almost compulsive attraction to water sports and maritime pursuits. A 1992 surfing accident nearly killed him—most people would have abandoned the activity. Ellison doubled down. He channeled this passion into sailing, and in 2013, the Oracle Team USA he backed executed one of sailing’s greatest comebacks at the America’s Cup.

In 2018, he founded SailGP, a high-speed catamaran racing league that has attracted celebrity investors including actress Anne Hathaway and football superstar Kylian Mbappé. Tennis obsessed him equally—he revived California’s Indian Wells tournament and branded it “the fifth Grand Slam.”

Yet this adrenaline-seeking adventurer practices extraordinary self-discipline in other domains. Former executives at his ventures have noted that Ellison spent hours daily exercising throughout the 1990s and 2000s. His diet consisted of water and green tea—no sugary beverages. Colleagues observed that his regimen made him appear “20 years younger than his age cohort.” At 81, he retains the physical vitality of someone in their sixties, suggesting that discipline and adventure aren’t opposites in his worldview but complementary expressions of the same philosophy: maximize experience, minimize waste.

The Romantic Thread

His matrimonial history—five marriages in total—suggests Ellison applies the same intensity to personal relationships as he does to surfing and business. The discovery of his marriage to Jolin Zhu, a woman born in Shenyang, China, and a University of Michigan graduate, prompted social media wags to joke that Ellison loves “riding waves and pursuing romance” with equal passion. Whether caustic or affectionate, the observation captures something true: he doesn’t accept conventional boundaries in any domain of life.

Wealth Redistribution on His Own Terms

In 2010, Ellison signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate at least 95% of his accumulated wealth. Unlike Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, however, he’s rarely visible in philanthropic forums or collaborative initiatives. According to a New York Times profile, he “values solitude and resists external ideological influence.”

His charitable approach remains distinctly personal. In 2016, he donated $200 million to establish the USC cancer research center. Recently, he announced his intention to channel portions of his fortune into the Ellison Institute of Technology, a partnership with Oxford University focused on healthcare innovation, sustainable agriculture, and clean energy development. He articulated the vision on social media: “We intend to design novel therapeutic medicines, construct affordable food production systems, and engineer sustainable energy solutions.”

Rather than align with peer philanthropists or join established frameworks, Ellison prefers to architect a future aligned with his personal convictions.

Epilogue: The Unretiable Billionaire

At 81 years old, Larry Ellison has achieved what few in his generation have accomplished: becoming the world’s wealthiest person. His narrative arc—from an abandoned infant to a database pioneer, from cloud computing skeptic to AI infrastructure architect—defies easy categorization.

He began with a classified government contract, constructed a global database empire, and then correctly positioned himself to capitalize on the artificial intelligence wave, achieving a victory that seemed improbable just five years earlier. Wealth, influence, matrimony, athletic pursuits, and philanthropy dominate his biography, each chapter dense with drama and consequence. He’s proven to be simultaneously stubborn and adaptive, competitive without compromise, and driven by a philosophy that treats life as an extreme sport.

The world’s richest list may fluctuate in coming months, but for now, Ellison has demonstrated to the global business community that the technological legacy of the older generation of moguls remains not merely relevant but essential to shaping the future of artificial intelligence.