How Larry Ellison is Quietly Shaping the Future of A.I., Social Media and Hollywood
Larry Ellison stepped down as Oracle’s CEO more than a decade ago. Yet the company’s co-founder, now executive chair and chief technology officer—with an estimated net worth of $190 billion—remains deeply involved in Oracle’s biggest moves. His influence ripples far beyond enterprise software, extending from A.I. infrastructure and social media to Hollywood. Ellison is a key backer in the Trump administration’s Stargate project, the U.S. takeover of TikTok and the $110 billion Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition led by his son, David Ellison.
Most of Ellison’s fortune comes from his Oracle holdings, and the company has soared amid the A.I. boom. For the fiscal third quarter ended Feb. 28, Oracle reported $17.2 billion in revenue, up 22 percent from a year earlier, including $8.9 billion from cloud services, up 44 percent. Once known primarily for database software and enterprise tools, Oracle has repositioned itself as a cloud powerhouse powering the world’s A.I. ambitions.
According to Oracle’s 2025 proxy filing, Ellison pledged 346 million Oracle shares—worth roughly $51 billion—as collateral to fund “outside personal business ventures.” His influence today merges business strategy with a broader worldview. In early 2025, he publicly argued that governments should unify their national data systems so A.I. platforms could query information more effectively. Ellison has also kept close political ties, having hosted a fundraiser for President Donald Trump at his California estate in 2020.
Ellison’s reach now converges across three fronts: building A.I. infrastructure with Oracle at the center of Stargate, securing TikTok’s American future and financing one of Hollywood’s largest mergers.
Stargate’s $500 billion A.I. ambition
On Jan. 21, 2025, Ellison appeared at the White House with Donald Trump, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to unveil Stargate, a plan to invest up to $500 billion over four years in U.S. A.I. infrastructure. The initiative began with $100 billion in immediate funding and construction already underway in Texas. Ellison said the effort would eventually span about 20 data centers nationwide.
OpenAI named Oracle, Nvidia and OpenAI itself as the lead developers and operators of Stargate’s computing systems. While SoftBank and OpenAI were each expected to contribute $19 billion in equity, Oracle’s exact investment was not disclosed.
Ellison remained the project’s chief evangelist, declaring in March 2025 that Oracle would double its global data center capacity that year. By July, Oracle and OpenAI announced plans to develop up to 4.5 gigawatts of additional Stargate capacity in the U.S.—enough to power several million servers—and anticipated a total of more than 5 gigawatts in the pipeline when combined with the flagship campus in Abilene, Texas.
By September, the joint venture had expanded to nearly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity across sites in Texas, New Mexico and the Midwest, representing more than $400 billion in projected investment. But momentum has not been seamless. In March 2026, Oracle and OpenAI scrapped a 600-megawatt expansion near Abilene after financing talks stalled and OpenAI’s priorities shifted. Even so, the broader 4.5-gigawatt buildout remains on track, and Abilene continues to host two operating data centers with six more in planning.
The making of TikTok U.S.
In January, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, finalized the creation of a majority American-owned TikTok U.S. to comply with the government’s divest-or-ban mandate. The restructured entity gave Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX 15 percent stakes each, while ByteDance retained 19.9 percent. Under the deal, Oracle became TikTok U.S.’s safeguard, hosting all American user data and algorithm controls on its domestic cloud under strict cybersecurity protocols.
In its March 10-Q filing, Oracle valued its stake at roughly $2 billion. By September, Vice President JD Vance estimated the overall enterprise value at around $14 billion. The arrangement made Oracle both an investor and infrastructure partner in one of America’s most politically scrutinized tech businesses.
Yet controversy continues. On March 17, Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, pressed White House officials to disclose whether investors had agreed to pay a $10 billion fee to the U.S. Treasury as part of the Trump-brokered transaction. Meanwhile, a separate lawsuit challenges the administration’s approval of the deal.
The fortune behind Paramount Skydance’s WBD bid
Ellison’s sway extends into the entertainment world through his personal fortune. In December 2025, he personally guaranteed $40.4 billion to bolster Paramount Skydance’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, stepping in after Warner’s board questioned the certainty of the offer’s financing.
Led by Ellison’s son, David Ellison, Paramount Skydance was competing with Netflix to acquire Warner. Netflix eventually declined to match the final offer, clearing the way for a landmark $110 billion deal announced in February 2026.
According to Reuters, the acquisition is being financed by $47 billion in equity from the Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners, plus $54 billion in debt commitments from Bank of America, Citigroup and Apollo Global Management. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026, pending regulatory approval.