Larry Ellison was born in New York City in 1944 to a teenage mother and was adopted as an infant by his aunt and uncle in Chicago. His adoptive father was strict, distant, and unimpressed by ambition. Praise was rare. Encouragement nonexistent.

Ellison didn’t fit the system. He was smart, opinionated, and bored easily. He attended college twice first at the University of Illinois, then at the University of Chicago and dropped out both times. No degree. No clear plan. Just confidence that he was smarter than most people in the room.

By the late 1960s, he moved to California during the early tech boom. He took programming jobs, learned databases on the fly, and paid close attention to one thing: where the money would eventually flow.

Ellison bounced between jobs, often clashing with management. He believed most software companies were building the wrong things and building them poorly.
In 1977, with little capital and no reputation, he co-founded a small company called Software Development Laboratories. The idea was risky: build a commercial database based on a research paper from IBM.

The early years were brutal. The company nearly failed multiple times. Sales were inconsistent. Ellison handled everything coding, pitching, hiring while burning cash and credibility. Bigger players dismissed him. Investors stayed away.

But Ellison kept pushing one belief: databases would become the backbone of every serious business.

The breakthrough came when the company later renamed Oracle landed a contract with the CIA. Oracle’s database worked. More importantly, it scaled.

Ellison made a critical decision early: Oracle would sell enterprise software, not consumer tools. Long contracts. High switching costs. Deep integration.
As companies digitized operations in the 1980s and 1990s, Oracle became unavoidable.

Oracle went public in 1986. Ellison became one of the youngest billionaires in tech. While competitors chased trends, he doubled down on databases, infrastructure, and aggressive sales.

Oracle grew into one of the most powerful software companies in the world, generating $50B+ in annual revenue and serving governments, banks, and global corporations.
Ellison became known for his aggressive leadership style cutthroat acquisitions, public feuds, and total control. He didn’t care about being liked. He cared about winning.

His wealth followed. Ellison’s net worth has consistently ranked among the world’s top fortunes, often exceeding $130B+. He owns luxury assets yachts, private islands, and a controlling stake in the Hawaiian island of Lanai but never softened his edge.

Even after stepping down as Oracle CEO, he remained deeply involved as CTO and chairman, while expanding into cloud computing and large scale infrastructure bets.