What is Larry Ellison‘s net worth in 2025? What are the secrets behind the 80-year-old from New York City, who is currently considered the second-wealthiest man in the world behind Elon Musk?
Ellison was born in 1944 when World War II was ongoing to a father serving in the United States Army Air Corps as a pilot, but was handed over to his maternal aunt and uncle shortly after developing pneumonia when he was nine.
He grew up in the South Shore region of Chicago and eventually went on to attend the University of Illinois and University of Chicago, but failed to complete both of his degrees at the respective colleges.
By 2005, Ellison was making a $975,000 salary and a $6.5 million bonus with $955,000 in compensation through Oracle computer systems company. By 2007, this rose to around $70m, and he was considered the richest man in California.
He appeared as the sixth-richest person in the world by 2010 and his fortune only continue to rise, appearing third wealthiest American by Forbes.
As of January 2025, Larry Ellison is worth approximately $216.9 billion and ranks third on the Forbes list, behind SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
Ellison is nearly four billion dollars ahead of Mark Zuckerberg, but trails Bezos by almost $30 billion.
Ellison makes his fortune predominately through Oracle, but further income has arrived through Tesla, the ownership of 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai and Paramount Global. He also recently acquired the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa in Florida.
How was Oracle formed?
Ellison began his career as an entrepreneur in 1977 when he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and a $2000 investment, of which $1200 came from himself.
The company then renamed itself to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI) in 1979 before finally settling on Oracle Systems Corporation in 1983 shortly after launching their flagship product, the Oracle Database.
However, Oracle struggled throughout the rest of the decade and into the 1990s due to a poor business model, forcing them to lay off 400 staff (10%) as it plummeted towards bankruptcy and found itself faced with legal troubles.
From the mid-1990s, the company truly took off and even dominated its markets before the Microsoft began to take over, but it has since rebounded throughout the 2000s and has become one of the prominent players once again.