{"id":141520,"date":"2025-09-13T17:52:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T17:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/141520\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T17:52:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T17:52:05","slug":"inside-the-wild-life-of-larry-ellison-who-briefly-dethroned-elon-musk-as-the-worlds-richest-man-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/141520\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the wild life of Larry Ellison, who briefly dethroned Elon Musk as the world’s richest man this week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asked to name the smartest person he\u2019s ever met, Elon Musk<\/a> had a quick response: \u201cLarry Ellison is very smart. I would say he is one of the smartest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Ellison is also the richest person Musk has ever met, after he briefly surpassed him<\/a> this week to top the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Oracle software honcho\u2019s net worth jumped by $101 billion \u2014\u00a0the biggest one-day increase ever recorded on the index \u2014 to $382 billion, pushing him past the Tesla boss.<\/p>\n

Larry Ellison recently became the richest man in the world. An author who spent a year working with him told The Post that she bets he \u201cwould be making some friendly jokes about being the world\u2019s wealthiest.\u201d Jay Hirano\/SOPA Images\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Ellison\u2019s fifth wife, Jolin Zhu, is 47 years younger than he is, aged 34. She hails from China but its unclear how they met or exactly when they married. Getty Images<\/p>\n

By the end of the day\u2019s trading, Musk had clawed things back in his favor \u2014 but only by a mere billion.<\/p>\n

Still, sources say becoming the world\u2019s richest man checked a major box for Ellison.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been waiting for this moment for almost 50 years,\u201d said an insider, referring to the lack of acclaim outside of Silicon Valley for Oracle, which sells software to businesses and therefore has not been as recognizable to everyday people as companies like Google<\/a> or Microsoft.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk has described Larry Ellison as one of the smartest people he has met. Now Ellison is the wealthiest. Getty Images<\/p>\n

There are others who believe the hard-charging Ellison, now 81, took it in stride.<\/p>\n

\u201cI bet he would be making some friendly jokes about being the world\u2019s wealthiest,\u201d Julian Guthrie, who spent a year interviewing Ellison for her book \u201cThe Billionaire and the Mechanic<\/a>\u201d told The Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cLarry is very different from the caricature of Larry. He is introspective, self-deprecating, incessantly inquisitive, a voracious reader of all sorts of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of those myriad interests include, \u201cmusic, sports, material science,\u201d and perhaps surprisingly, \u201cJapanese pottery.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Ellison maintains an avid interest in all things related to Japan. He has an extensive collection of Japanese art, covering at least 1,100 years \u2014 64 of his pieces were displayed at the Asian Art Museum<\/a> in San Francisco \u2014 as well as Samurai swords.<\/p>\n

An overhead shot of Larry Ellison\u2019s Woodside, California, residence. It is designed to resemble a Kyoto getaway spot.<\/p>\n

The shoreline of Lanai, the Hawaiian island of which Larry Ellison owns 98%. VW PICS\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Japanese aesthetic extends to\u00a0his\u00a023-acre estate in Woodside,<\/a> California. That spread is designed to resemble a Kyoto getaway, complete with private lake, tea house and koi pond, which he is reported to have spent $200m renovating. \u00a0<\/p>\n

As if that wasn\u2019t enough he even owns an actual villa in Kyoto, Japan, situated on the grounds of a Zen Buddhist temple, which is said to be worth up to $86 million and reflects his \u201cdeep appreciation for Japanese culture and design.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding\u00a0Ellison \u2013 currently married to his fifth wife Jolin Zhu, 34 \u2013 Guthrie added, \u201cHe\u2019s comfortable with who he is. But it\u2019s\u00a0more about this awareness of what\u2019s most important: It\u2019s\u00a0your family, it\u2019s your immediate group, it\u2019s\u00a0your kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, cut a $300 billion deal with Oracle. AP<\/p>\n

Ellison\u2019s offspring, with his third wife Barbara Boothe, are David and Megan Ellison. The brother and sister are currently making waves in Hollywood: David is CEO and chairman of Paramount<\/a>, a Skydance Corporation, while Megan has produced highly regarded movies such as \u201cAmerican Hustle\u201d and \u201cPhantom Thread.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ellison\u2019s mega boost in his net worth came with the announcement Tuesday that Sam Altman\u2019s OpenAI had cut a $300 billion deal for Oracle to build data centers that will be used to develop his company\u2019s artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cData centers are the biggest revenue generators. Oracle has aggressively entered that world and they just got their first big tenant,\u201d explained Gary Rivlin, author of \u201cThe Plot to Get Bill Gates<\/a>\u201d and \u201cAI Valley<\/a>,\u201d to The Post.<\/p>\n

Ellison watchers are interested to see what he may invest in with his new windfall, since he already has a reputation for living large.<\/p>\n

He has more than a dozen homes; according to Robb Report, including a San Francisco mansion, the homes in Woodside and Japan, a Newport, Rhode Island, estate that once belonged to the Astors and the most expensive home in New Jersey \u2013 a $173 million compound in the town of Manalapan.<\/p>\n

Larry Ellison\u2019s super yacht, Musashi, named after a Japanese samurai. Corbis via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Oracle Team USA sailing yacht alongside Larry Ellison\u2019s super yacht. AP<\/p>\n

Perhaps Ellison\u2019s most extravagant purchase is Lanai, the sixth largest Hawaiian island, of which he owns 98%. A former pineapple plantation, the island features two luxury Four Seasons resorts, and Ellison has developed lavish gardens displaying some of his collected artwork and a golf course.<\/p>\n

The island is only habited in one place, Lanai City, which has just 3,000 residents and boasts just one school, one hospital and no traffic lights. Ellison is the main employer for almost everyone on the island.<\/p>\n

He has a number of different ways he can travel there, owning two military jets \u2013 which he is a pilot, qualified to fly \u2013 and a super-luxury yacht.<\/p>\n

Named Musashi, in tribute to the great samurai warrior Miyamoto Musashi, the yacht is 288 feet long, designed in a minimalist Japanese style and cost some $160 million. It takes 23 crew to operate, has five decks and includes a gym, spa, cinema and a glass elevator at its center.<\/p>\n

Larry Ellison with his son David Ellison who is making waves in Hollywood. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Larry Ellison with his daughter Megan Ellison who is has produced movies such as \u201cAmerican Hustle.\u201d David Silpa\/UPI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has a lot of toys, at the highest level,\u201d said Guthrie. \u201cHe gets a lot of pleasure out of beautifully designed [things].\u201d<\/p>\n

The mega-yacht also has a basketball court, and because shooting baskets is less of a science than designing software, sometimes shots go awry and balls go overboard.<\/p>\n

But Ellison has a solution for that: Sports Illustrated reported that a powerboat trails the superyacht and has a person tasked with picking errant balls out of the ocean<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a move which would not have seemed out of place from Gavin Belson, the overwrought, power-hungry and often absurd CEO character in the HBO tech parody series \u201cSilicon Valley.\u201d Sources said they believe the character is partly based on Ellison, who did not respond to The Post\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

Larry Ellison, an early and avid supporter of President Trump, in the Oval Office. AP<\/p>\n

Ellison started out far from a world where private jets and yachts would part of everyday life. Born in the Bronx and raised on Chicago\u2019s South Side, he dropped out of both University of Illinois and University of Chicago.<\/p>\n

Along the way, however, he excelled at physics and that led him to computer programming jobs when he was in his 20s.<\/p>\n

In the book \u201cSoftwar<\/a>,\u201d author Matthew Sybond describes Ellison landing in Berkeley in the 1960s and flitting through a variety of well-paying tech gigs before co-launching his own firm, with clients that included the CIA. Ellison cofounded Oracle Systems Corporation in the early 1977, naming it for a database that he had helped to develop.<\/p>\n

President Trump described Larry Ellison as the \u201cCEO of everything.\u201d Getty Images<\/p>\n

Oracle grew to be one of Silicon Valley\u2019s top database companies, creating software and cloud services. The company offered reliable products and aggressively expanded, turning Ellison into a billionaire many times over. In March 2010, Forbes magazine named him the sixth richest man in America, with a net worth of more than $28 billion.<\/p>\n

As to how he got there, Rivlin said, \u201cWe probably throw around the world brilliant too much. But I think he is a brilliant guy who figured out that databases would be really important. He hired the right people, made very aggressive hires, offered them huge bonuses if they could exceed expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In life, Ellison exceeded expectations on his own. He is a licensed airplane pilot who portrayed himself in \u201cIron Man 2\u201d and made a White House visit to Donald Trump (along with Altman and SoftBank\u2019s Masayoshi Son) during the President\u2019s first full day in office.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s sort of CEO of everything,\u201d Trump said of Ellison, a longtime supporter. \u201cHe\u2019s an amazing man.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to what happens next for Ellison, will he just rest on his considerable laurels and live a quiet life?\u201cHe\u2019s not done yet,\u201d predicts Rivlin. \u201cHe\u2019s always kept himself in really great shape.\u00a0He\u2019s given millions of dollars to research aging.That\u2019s a big Silicon Valley thing. And, of course, Larry Ellison has been part of it because he\u2019s part of everything in Silicon Valley.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asked to name the smartest person he\u2019s ever met, Elon Musk had a quick response: \u201cLarry Ellison is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[2923,49,48,361,250,75,20522,5884,886],"class_list":{"0":"post-141520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-billionaires","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-celebrities","12":"tag-elon-musk","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-larry-ellison","15":"tag-silicon-valley","16":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}