Chris Moneymaker
$10 million
Larry Ellison has a net worth of $185 billion, placing him among the three wealthiest people on the planet. Lawrence Joseph Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 and built it into the world’s second-largest software company by revenue. He stepped down as CEO in 2014 but remains Oracle’s CTO and executive chairman, holding an approximately 35% ownership stake in the company. His fortune surged dramatically in 2024 and 2025 as Oracle’s stock climbed on AI infrastructure demand, briefly making him the richest person in the world in September 2025.
Updated March 2026: According to Forbes’ real-time billionaires tracking and the Forbes 2026 Billionaires list, Larry Ellison’s net worth is approximately $185–190 billion, ranking him among the world’s six wealthiest individuals.
Lawrence Joseph Ellison was born on August 17, 1944, in New York City’s Bronx borough. His mother, Florence Spellman, was a 19-year-old unmarried woman who gave him to her aunt and uncle, Lillian and Louis Ellison, to raise in Chicago’s South Side. Ellison grew up in a modest Jewish household and attended South Shore High School in Chicago. He enrolled at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign but dropped out after his first year when his adoptive mother died. He then briefly attended the University of Chicago before dropping out again. Ellison moved to California in the mid-1960s, where he worked at various technology companies including Ampex Corporation, where he worked on a database project for the CIA codenamed “Oracle”—a project that directly inspired the name of his future company. At Amdahl Corporation, Ellison met Bob Miner and Ed Oates, who would later co-found Oracle with him.
In 1977, Ellison co-founded Software Development Laboratories with Bob Miner and Ed Oates, using $2,000 of his own money. The company was renamed Relational Software Inc. in 1979 and then Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982 (later shortened to Oracle Corporation). Oracle’s core product is its enterprise database management system, which became the backbone of business computing for corporations worldwide. The company went public in 1986. Oracle expanded aggressively through both organic growth and acquisitions, including the $10.3 billion purchase of PeopleSoft in 2005, the $7.4 billion acquisition of BEA Systems in 2008, the $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010, and the $28.3 billion acquisition of Cerner (a healthcare IT company) in 2022. Ellison stepped down as CEO in September 2014, handing the role to Safra Catz and Mark Hurd (Hurd died in 2019), but remained chairman and CTO. Under his continued strategic oversight, Oracle pivoted aggressively into cloud computing and AI infrastructure. Oracle’s stock price increased approximately 400% between 2022 and 2025 as the company secured major AI computing contracts, including a reported $30 billion partnership with OpenAI in early 2025. On September 10, 2025, following a sharp Oracle stock surge, Ellison’s estimated net worth briefly reached $393 billion, making him the wealthiest person in the world for that day.
Beyond Oracle, Ellison is known for owning 98% of Lānaʻi, the sixth-largest of the Hawaiian Islands, which he purchased from Castle & Cooke in 2012 for approximately $300 million. He has invested heavily in the island’s infrastructure, including its water systems, agriculture, and hotels. Ellison is an accomplished amateur pilot and also a competitive sailor; he previously owned the Oracle Team USA America’s Cup racing team, which won back-to-back America’s Cup titles in 2010 and 2013.
Ellison’s wealth is almost entirely driven by his Oracle equity stake:
Ellison has been married four times. His first marriage was to Adda Quinn in 1967; they divorced in 1974. He married Nancy Wheeler Jenkins in 1977; they divorced in 1978. He married Barbara Boothe in 1983; they have two children, David Ellison (born 1983) and Megan Ellison (born 1987), and divorced in 1986. He married novelist Melanie Craft in 2003; they divorced in 2010. David Ellison is the founder and CEO of Skydance Media, the production company behind the Top Gun: Maverick franchise, and acquired Paramount Global in 2024. Megan Ellison is an Academy Award-winning film producer whose credits include Zero Dark Thirty (2012), American Hustle (2013), and Her (2013) through her production company Annapurna Pictures. Ellison resides primarily in Manalapan, Florida, where he moved after California raised taxes on high earners. He has committed to the Giving Pledge, promising to donate the majority of his wealth to charitable causes, though his philanthropic activity has been more limited compared to other Giving Pledge signatories. He has donated to the University of Southern California and to medical research, including a $200 million gift to USC in 2016 for cancer research.
Larry Ellison’s net worth is approximately $185 billion as of early 2026, according to Forbes. This places him among the world’s six wealthiest individuals. His fortune surged dramatically between 2023 and 2025 as Oracle’s stock price rose on AI cloud infrastructure demand. In September 2025, his estimated net worth briefly reached $393 billion before declining as Oracle’s stock moderated.
Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 with $2,000 and built it into the world’s second-largest software company by revenue. His approximately 35% stake in Oracle is the near-exclusive source of his wealth. Oracle’s pivot to cloud computing and AI infrastructure between 2022 and 2025 drove a roughly 400% increase in the company’s stock price, adding well over $100 billion to his net worth during that period.
Yes. Ellison purchased approximately 98% of Lānaʻi, the sixth-largest Hawaiian island, from Castle & Cooke in 2012 for a reported $300 million. The island has a population of approximately 3,200 people. Ellison has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the island’s infrastructure, hotels (including two Four Seasons properties), agriculture, and utilities.
As of March 2026, Larry Ellison is 81 years old. Larry Ellison was born on August 17, 1944 in New York City, New York, USA.
Larry Ellison is married to Jolin (Keren) Ellison, née Zhu. He has been married five times previously, to Adda Quinn, Nancy Wheeler Jenkins, Barbara Boothe, Melanie Craft, and Nikita Kahn. He has at least six children, including film producers David and Megan Ellison.
Yes, Larry Ellison has at least six children. His most publicly known children are David Ellison (43), who runs Skydance Media, and Megan Ellison (40), who founded Annapurna Pictures. He also has four children with his current wife whose details remain private.
Larry Ellison lives on the island of Lānaʻi, Hawaii, where he owns approximately 98% of the land. His holdings on the island are valued at $500–600 million, making it one of the most extraordinary private residences in the world.
Larry Ellison earned $1.84 billion in total compensation from Oracle between 2010 and 2020. He also realized a personal gain of $3.5 billion from the sale of NetSuite to Oracle.