Do you Know the net worth of Larry Ellison? Have you ever guessed where he comes from and where he attended school? Do you know how Larry’s career began and how he made his wealth? This article answers all your questions about Larry Ellison net worth.
Who is Larry Ellison?
Lawrence Joseph Ellison is an American businessman and investor who is the co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer (CTO) and former chief executive officer (CEO) of Oracle Corporation. As of December 2021, he was listed by Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the eighth-wealthiest person in the United States. He is the ninth-wealthiest in the world. He is also the owner of the 43rd largest island in the United States, Lanai in the Hawaiian Islands with a population of just over 3200.
Where Larry Ellison Originated
Larry Ellison was born on August 17, 1944, in New York City, to an unwed Jewish mother. His biological father was an Italian-American United States Army Air Corps pilot. After Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of nine months, his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption. He did not meet his biological mother again until he was 48.
Ellison moved to Chicago’s South Shore, then a middle-class neighborhood. He remembers his adoptive mother as warm and loving, in contrast to his austere, unsupportive, and often distant adoptive father, who had chosen the name Ellison to honor his point of entry into the United States, Ellis Island. Louis Ellison was a government employee who had made a small fortune in Chicago real estate, only to lose it during the Great Depression.
Although Ellison was raised in a Reform Jewish home by his adoptive parents, who attended synagogue regularly, he remained a religious skeptic. At age thirteen, Ellison refused to have a bar mitzvah celebration. In 1966, aged 22, he moved to Berkeley, California.
Education
Ellison attended South Shore High School in Chicago and later was admitted to University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and was enrolled as a premed student. At the university, he was named science student of the year. He withdrew without taking final exams after his sophomore year, because his adoptive mother had just died. After spending the summer of 1966 in California, he then attended the University of Chicago for one term, studying physics and mathematics. He did not take any exams, but he first encountered computer design there.
Career and Businesses
Larry Ellison owns, founded or co-founded and or have stakes in the following companies;
- Oracle
- Austin
- Tesla
- Sun Microsystem
- Oates and Miner
- NetSuite
- BNP Paribas Open
The Wealth of Larry Ellison
In 1997, Ellison received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2013, Ellison was inducted into the Bay Area Business Hall of Fame.
In 2019, the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC honored Ellison with the first Rebels With A Cause Award in recognition of his generous support through the years.
The European Union approved Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems on January 21, 2010, and agreed that Oracle’s acquisition of Sun “has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products”.
The Sun acquisition also gave Oracle control of the popular MySQL open source database, which Sun had acquired in 2008. On August 9, 2010, Ellison denounced Hewlett-Packard’s board for firing CEO Mark Hurd, writing that “the HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.” (Ellison and Hurd were close personal friends.) Then on September 6, Oracle hired Mark Hurd as co-president alongside Safra Catz. Ellison remained in his current role at Oracle.
In March 2010, the Forbes list of billionaires ranked Ellison as the sixth-richest person in the world and as the third-richest American, with an estimated net worth of US$28 billion. On July 27, 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ellison was the best-paid executive in the last decade, collecting a total compensation of US$1.84 billion. In September 2011, Ellison was listed on the Forbes list of billionaires as the fifth richest man in the world and was still the third richest American, with a net worth of about $36.5 billion. In September 2012, Ellison was again listed on the Forbes list of billionaires as the third richest American citizen, behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, with a net worth of $44 billion.
In October 2012, he was listed just behind David Hamilton Koch as the eighth richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ellison owns stakes in Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Quark Biotechnology Inc. and Astex Pharmaceuticals. In June 2012, Ellison agreed to buy 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lana’i from David Murdock’s company, Castle & Cooke. The price was reported to be between $500 million and $600 million. In 2005, Ellison agreed to settle a four-year-old insider-trading lawsuit by offering to pay $100 million to charity in Oracle’s name.
In 2013, according to the Wall Street Journal, Ellison earned $94.6 million. On September 18, 2014, Ellison appointed Mark Hurd to CEO of Oracle from his former position as President; Safra Catz was also made CEO, moving from her former role as CFO. Ellison assumed the positions of chief technology officer and executive chairman.
In November 2016, Oracle bought NetSuite for $9.3 billion. Ellison owned 35% of NetSuite at the time of the purchase making him $3.5 billion personally.
In 2017, Forbes estimated that Ellison was the 4th richest person in tech. In June 2018, Ellison’s net worth was about $54.5 billion, according to Forbes.
In December 2018, Ellison became a director on the board of Tesla, Inc., after purchasing 3 million shares earlier that year. As of December 31, 2019, Ellison owns 36.2% of the shares of Oracle Corporation, and 1.7% of the shares of Tesla.
As of June 2020, Ellison is said to be the seventh wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $66.8 billion. In December 2020, his net worth increased by $2.5 billion in a single week as Oracle’s stock jumped by 4% between November 27 and December 4.
Summary of Larry Ellison Net Worth
- Larry Ellison is chairman, chief technology officer and co-founder of software giant Oracle, of which he owns about 35%.
- He gave up the Oracle CEO role in 2014 after 37 years at the helm.
- Oracle has grown in part through steady acquisitions of software companies, the biggest of which was $9.3 billion for NetSuite in 2016.
- In 2020, Ellison moved permanently to the Hawaiian island Lanai, which he bought nearly all of in 2012 for $300 million.
- Ellison joined Tesla’s board in December 2018, after purchasing 3 million Tesla shares earlier that year.