ABOUT LARRY ELLISON
Early Life.
Oracle founder and current Chief Technology Officer Lawrence Joseph Ellison was born in New York City on August 14, 1944. His biological mother, Florence Spellman, raised Larry Ellison on her own for the first months of his life, until he came down with pneumonia at nine months old. In search of a better life for her son, Florence sent Ellison to live with Lillian and Louis Ellison, her aunt and uncle, in Chicago.
Ellison grew up in a Reform Jewish household in a middle-class South Shore neighborhood. His adoptive father, Louis, was a Russian immigrant originally named Louis Goldman. Louis immigrated to the United States through Ellis Island, from which he took the “Americanized” name of Ellison.
Ellison graduated from South Shore High School at Urbana-Champaign and entered the University of Illinois in 1962. He attended college for two years, earning plaudits as Science Student of the Year as a freshman. Ellison left the University of Illinois in 1964 He entered the University of Chicago in 1966, but dropped out after a single semester. However, this semester proved critical to Ellison’s future, providing him his first encounters with physics and computer science. His time at the University of Chicago helped him secure a contract with the nearby Argonne National Laboratory to program IBM mainframes.
“I could get programs written very quickly... It was fun and it was easy. And nobody cared if you were a Ph.D. from MIT or had never finished high school. Either you could do the job or you couldn’t. I loved that.”
– Larry Ellison
By age 22, Ellison knew he was a skilled programmer, so he left Chicago and moved halfway across the country to Berkeley, California. He made the journey in a bright blue used Ford Thunderbird, an early sign of his admiration of high-performance machines.
Settling near a nascent Silicon Valley and its expanding tech industry, Ellison began working a series of software-focused jobs. During his early years in Northern California, Ellison spent time at Wells Fargo, Amdahl, and Ampex. His work for Ampex included developing the first IBM-compatible mainframe system not actually manufactured by IBM, and he also worked on a database storage system funded by the CIA.
Ellison’s breakthroughs gave Amdahl its entry point into the mainframe market. His work at Amdahl also brought him to the attention of Precision Instruments, which hired him as its vice president of research and development in 1976.
Ellison and Oracle: The Early Days
The seeds for Oracle were planted in 1973 when Ellison joined Ampex and met Ed Oates and Bob Miner. Ellison’s move to Precision Instruments also nurtured his budding entrepreneurial ambitions, as he quickly identified widespread inefficiencies at his new employer. In 1977, Ellison, Oates, and Miner founded Software Development Labs (SDL) with $2,000 in seed funding, $1,200 of which came from Ellison’s own savings.
“My original goal was to build a company doing about $10 million of revenue and employing about 50 people. What motivated me was the desire to control my environment so I wouldn’t have to do things I didn’t want to do or spend time with people I didn’t enjoy working with.”
– Larry Ellison
SDL’s first client was Ellison’s former employer. Precision Instruments, which had been renamed Omex, awarded SDL a $400,000 contract to develop a mass-storage system — a precursor to the first Oracle database. While working on their Omex project, Ellison and his partners brainstormed new software products the company could sell to a wider range of customers, so as to transition from case-by-case consulting to product-focused innovation.
Ellison’s experience at Ampex provided SDL its early (and enduring) focus on creating new and better ways to manage databases. Ellison had read Edgar F. Codd’s foundational 1970 paper, “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks,” while working on Ampex’s CIA project several years earlier. Codd, then working at IBM’s Research Lab, had pushed his employer to put his theories into practice, leading to the development of IBM’s System R, a first-of-its-kind relational database project implemented with the SQL programming language. Ellison recognized the value of relational databases through Codd’s work, and System R convinced Ellison to build out the first Oracle Database in SQL.
SDL soon picked up its first external contract, which was to develop a database management system for the CIA. That system, the first commercial relational database coded with SQL, became known as Oracle Database. Ellison and his partners initially released Oracle Database in 1979 as Version 2. SDL also renamed itself Relational Software, Inc that year to underscore the importance of its first commercial product. Ellison became RSI’s top salesman, promoting the database management system to several federal government agencies. Ellison’s sales efforts helped RSI quickly add contracts with the NSA, Air Force Intelligence, and Navy Intelligence, to its deal with the CIA.
“The first version of our database was called Oracle Version 2. I didn’t think anyone, not even the government, would buy Version 1 of a database from five guys in California.”
– Larry Ellison
RSI had less than $1 million in annual revenue when it released Oracle Version 2, and this first release initially struggled to outperform the government’s existing CODASYL database systems. However, Ellison and RSI soon discovered ways to vastly increase Oracle Database’s performance, pushing it ahead of CODASYL. This breakthrough, combined with IBM’s adoption of Oracle Database in 1981, gave RSI the resources and recognition it needed for massive growth. A year later, Ellison renamed Relational Software to Oracle Systems Corporation. This was shortened to the company’s modern name, Oracle Corporation, in 1995.
Expansion
IBM’s adoption of the Oracle Database was a major sign that Ellison’s developments had significant commercial potential. Although he continued to work closely with his growing development team, Ellison also became Oracle’s public face, meeting with major customers and touting the advantages of Oracle’s software at professional conferences around the country.
“There was a great need to do a very high level sell and say, ‘Hey, this is going to be the thing’ ... Larry was very good at this. He was like a spiritual leader, an evangelist for the relational database model.”
– Don Lucas
Ellison was determined to evolve the Oracle Database system. He directed development of Version 3 in C, a new programming language that could run on a wide variety of systems. Ellison’s risk paid off with the launch of Version 3 in 1983, igniting a run of growth that continued for the rest of the decade. Oracle doubled its annual revenue each year after the launch of Version 3, from roughly $2.5 million in fiscal 1982 to $584 million in 1989. This impressive financial performance enabled the company’s successful IPO in 1986. The IPO made Ellison, Oracle’s founder, largest shareholder, and Chief Executive Officer, a millionaire at age 42.
In 1987, Oracle became the world’s largest database management company for the first time. Under Ellison’s leadership, Oracle reached $131 million in annual revenue and reported a customer base of more than 4,500 organizations in 55 countries. Ellison also pushed Oracle into business applications development that year by launching the company’s Applications division. By the end of the 1980s, Ellison had become one of the most well-known technology entrepreneurs in the world. Oracle stock was added to Standard & Poor’s 500 index in 1989, cementing its position as one of the largest and most promising publicly-traded technology companies.
Ellison celebrated several big wins and also worked through some major challenges in 1990. That year, he was named Executive of the Year by Government Computer News and Entrepreneur of the Year by the Harvard Business School. Oracle ended its 1990 fiscal year in May with revenue of $971 million, representing total growth of 38,740 percent from 1982. However, Oracle’s impressive decade-long growth was not without its growing pains. The company reported its first-ever quarterly loss in September 1990, which resulted in a major organizational restructuring. Many experienced managers were hired to oversee the company’s day-to-day operations. Ellison refocused his attention on developing better products and innovative technologies. Reflecting on these challenges, Ellison told Forbes in 1991, “you pay a price for growing too rapidly.”
Ellison positioned Oracle to capitalize on the emergence of the World Wide Web in the 1990s and, as a result, grew to become one of world’s the most valuable companies by the end of the decade. In 1994, Ellison appeared on what he called “the world’s first annual report on CD-ROM, a vision of the future on the information highway” to present Oracle’s fiscal year results via video to shareholders. Ellison was also instrumental in creating Oracle OpenWorld, a professional conference that first grew out of the Oracle Users Group Conference in 1997. OpenWorld was one of the earliest major tech industry events, and it’s been credited with helping develop the modern corporate event experience. In 2018, Ellison delivered two keynote presentations to more than 60,000 attendees, in addition to millions of viewers who streamed the event in real time.
In 1999, Ellison hired banker Safra Catz as his chief of staff; Catz would later be elevated to Oracle’s Board of Directors in 2001, appointed as Oracle’s President in 2004, and named CFO, for the first of two stints, in 2005.
In 2000, Ellison oversaw the launch of Oracle’s E-Business Suite 11i, the industry’s first fully-integrated suite of business applications. It added customer relationship management (CRM) and other front-end functionalities to Oracle’s existing suite of applications, furthering the company’s push to become a one-stop shop for enterprise software and anticipating its current role as the world’s leading provider of integrated cloud-based software-as-a-service business applications.
2005 marked a significant shift in Ellison’s approach to Oracle’s growth. He’d previously pursued few acquisitions, but in 2005, Oracle closed the books on a $10.3 billion buyout of PeopleSoft and initiated a $5.9 billion acquisition of Siebel. These two acquisitions converted two of Ellison’s largest competitors into two of Oracle’s largest subsidiaries, adding PeopleSoft’s range of business applications and Siebel’s CRM systems to Oracle’s already sizable product lineup. In 2005 and 2006, Oracle completed 25 notable acquisitions, several more than it had undertaken in all previous years combined. Ellison’s focus on growing Oracle through strategic acquisitions has continued through the present day.
Oracle Today
Ellison began stepping back from day-to-day operational work as Oracle’s CEO after elevating Safra Catz as CFO. However, his transition accelerated after he hired veteran tech executive Mark Hurd to serve as co-President alongside Catz. Four years later, Hurd and Catz jointly became Oracle’s CEOs when Ellison stepped down to become the company’s Chief Technology Officer.
Ellison’s current approach at Oracle now emphasizes growth through acquisitions and the development of world-class, industry-leading technologies. He’s overseen more than 100 Oracle acquisitions in the 21st century, most of which have contributed unique strengths to Oracle’s range of business applications. In addition to PeopleSoft and Siebel, Ellison also pushed to acquire Hyperion in 2007, BEA Systems in 2008, Sun Microsystems in 2010, MICROS in 2014, and NetSuite in 2016.
In fiscal 2018, the company generated more than $40 billion in annual revenue, served more than 430,000 customers in 175 countries, and employed nearly 140,000 people around the world.
Technology Entrepreneur
Larry Ellison has supported many successful technology-focused businesses with personal investments and other resources throughout the course of his career. These efforts began in earnest shortly after Oracle’s successful 1986 IPO and have continued to the present day.
nCUBE
In 1988, Ellison made his first major outside investment when he acquired a majority stake in parallel-computing startup nCUBE. The company, started by a group of former Intel employees, sought to build “hypercube” machines that could effectively process data across numerous chips.
Ellison worked closely with nCUBE for much of its existence, which included a stint as the company’s acting CEO from 1996 until 2002.
Apple
Not long after taking the reins at nCUBE, Ellison proposed buying out another computing hardware innovator, announcing plans to acquire Apple Computer in early 1997. Apple had recently completed its acquisition of NeXT, which brought Apple cofounder Steve Jobs back into the fold, but it continued to struggle under the leadership of then-CEO Gil Amelio. Ellison told Jobs, his longtime friend, “I will buy Apple, you will get 25 percent of it right away for being CEO, and we can restore it to its past glory.”
Ellison’s buyout plans were called off because of Jobs’ reluctance to regain power through a hostile takeover. However, Ellison’s efforts pushed Apple’s board members to reinstate Jobs as CEO. Ellison was the first person Jobs appointed to Apple’s board of directors after his elevation. He served in this role until 2002.
NetSuite and Salesforce
The late 1990s were critical to Ellison’s development as a venture capitalist and technology investor. In 1998, Ellison and two top Oracle executives convened a meeting to discuss “software as a service,” a then-unproven concept devised by Oracle VP Evan Goldberg. Another Oracle VP, Marc Benioff, was also in attendance.
Goldberg left Oracle to form NetSuite (originally NetLedger) in 1998 with Ellison’s strong support. He ultimately received $125 million in seed funding from his former boss. Benioff left Oracle in 1999 to create Salesforce, which Ellison seeded with roughly $2 million. Oracle acquired NetSuite for $9.3 billion in 2016, adding NetSuite’s pioneering cloud-based business applications to its own range of cloud software and services.
Tesla
In 2018, Ellison revealed that he owned three million shares of electric automaker Tesla, making it his second-largest personal investment. Two months after this announcement, Tesla CEO Elon Musk appointed Ellison and Walgreens Boots Alliance CHRO Kathleen Wilson-Thompson to Tesla’s board of directors.
Sensei
In 2018, Ellison launched a consumer-focused wellness company known as Sensei, which he co-founded with his friend David Agus, an oncologist and founding director of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine at USC. Ellison and Agus met through Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, as Agus once served as Jobs’ personal physician. One of Sensei’s earliest endeavors was the development of a hydroponic farm on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which Ellison owns. Sensei Farms will focus on growing organic heirloom fruits and vegetables to be offered for sale to local vendors and residents. The farm will also use Tesla solar panels to minimize its energy footprint.
Lanai
In 2012, Larry Ellison bought 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, nicknamed “Pineapple Island.” Lanai’s 90,000 acres are home to 3,200 residents and two Four Seasons resorts.
Philanthropy
The Giving Pledge
In August of 2010, Larry Ellison joined with 40 of the wealthiest individuals in the United States to commit to the Giving Pledge. The Giving Pledge, created by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, sets new standards for philanthropic giving by high-net-worth individuals. The pledge asks these individuals to commit at least half of their wealth to charitable causes. Its goal is to shift social norms surrounding philanthropy, thus inspiring people to donate more, sooner, and smarter. Ellison pledged 95 percent of his wealth to charitable causes.
The Lawrence Ellison Foundation (LEF)
Larry Ellison is the founder of The Lawrence Ellison Foundation, which was, until recently, known as the Ellison Medical Foundation (EMF). EMF has been responsible for a number of charitable endeavors. Its primary mission has been supporting biomedical research, with an emphasis on aging and age-related diseases and disabilities. The EMF provided funding for new and creative research approaches often neglected by existing research-funding programs.
Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International
Larry Ellison’s commitment to gorillas started in 1988 when he saw the film, “Gorillas in the Mist,” an adaptation of Dian Fossey’s autobiography. Fossey was a wildlife expert who established the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda’s Virunga Mountains in 1967 to study and protect the endangered mountain gorilla. Ellison spearheaded efforts to make Oracle a leader in protecting mountain gorillas, and it became the first major for-profit corporation in the United States to support this cause. Oracle’s funding supported the organization after Fossey’s untimely death in 1985. Today, Oracle is a Collaborating Funder of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, providing annual funding for programs supporting the organization’s mission.
USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Institute
In May 2016, Ellison provided a lead gift of $200 million to launch the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC, expanding on services offered by the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Institute in Los Angeles, California. His donation supported development of a new center in nearby Beverly Hills. Ellison’s vision for the center involves inviting mathematicians, physicists, and other scientists to collaborate with medical and biological cancer researchers.
Other Endeavors
In 2010, after a hurricane decimated Haiti, Ellison and Oracle hosted the “Hit for Haiti” tennis fundraiser for American Red Cross relief efforts in the country. The exhibition was held as part of the BNP Paribas Open and featured star-studded women’s and men’s doubles matches. The women’s match featured Stefanie Graf and Lindsay Davenport against Martina Navratilova and Justine Henin. The men’s match featured Roger Federer and Pete Sampras against Rafael Nadal and Andre Agassi.
Personal Life
Larry Ellison has two children, David and Margaret (Megan) Ellison, from a previous marriage to Barbara Boothe. David Ellison was born in 1983. He is an American film producer and is the founder and CEO of Skydance Media. Megan Ellison was born in 1986. She is a film producer and is the founder and CEO of Annapurna Pictures.
Ellison’s girlfriend Nikita Kahn is a former gymnast and is now a model, actress, and activist.
Sports
Oracle Team USA
Oracle Team USA is an American yacht-racing organization. The team was initially formed to compete in the 2003 America’s Cup, a two-team yacht race held since 1851. Ellison was part of the Oracle Team USA teams that captured the America’s Cup in 2010 and 2013.
Tennis
Larry Ellison and Oracle are committed to supporting American tennis and promising tennis players. In 2009, Ellison purchased the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in Palm Springs, California, as well as the BNP Paribas Open championships contested there each year. Ellison often plays tennis four or five times a week.
Oracle also launched the Oracle Challenger Series in 2017 to support up-and-coming tennis players in the United States. Top competitors can win prize money, as well as wildcard entries to the BNP Paribas Open.
In 2018, he became a partner and investor in Universal Tennis, the company behind the UTR global tennis rating system.
Golf
Ellison is an avid golfer. He often plays on Porcupine Creek, his 246-acre estate that includes a private golf course in Rancho Mirage, California. The course has been voted one of the top courses in California by Golf Digest magazine.
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