THE CEO OF EVERYTHING

"I have had all the disadvantages required for success.”

That quote, a defiant summary of his own origin story, is pure Larry Ellison.

So is this one:

“Winning is not enough. All others must lose”.

Together, they capture the essence of one of the richest, most competitive, and most powerful men on the planet

A man who, at times, has topped the list of the world's wealthiest individuals.

Yet, for a man whose company’s software is an invisible but essential layer of the global economy, Larry Ellison remains a figure of relative obscurity to the public.

He isn't just a tech billionaire; he's the architect of a sprawling empire of data, cloud computing, and, increasingly, the media you consume.

From a programmer to the "CEO of everything," his journey reveals a relentless pursuit of power that is reshaping our world.

The Underdog with a Grudge

The story begins not in a Silicon Valley garage, but on the South Side of Chicago. Born in 1944 to an unwed mother, Larry was given up for adoption. Raised in a middle-class home, he clashed constantly with his adoptive father, who saw him as a failure in the making.

This early struggle lit a fire in him. He developed a deep-seated need to prove everyone wrong.

As he puts it:

“The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority”.

His rebellion continued into young adulthood.

He enrolled in two different universities and dropped out of both, finally moving to Berkeley, California, with nothing but a desire to make his mark.

He taught himself to program and took on various jobs, eventually landing at the electronics company Ampex.

It was there he encountered a research paper by an IBM scientist describing a "relational database", a new way to organize and access vast amounts of information.

While IBM saw little commercial value in the concept, Ellison recognized its revolutionary potential.

Oracle: The CIA's Database and the World's Brain

In 1977, with $2,000 of their own money, Ellison, along with his former colleagues Bob Miner and Ed Oates, founded a company called Software Development Laboratories.

Their first major breakthrough was winning a contract with the CIA to build a relational database management system, codenamed Project Oracle.

This project became the foundation of their business. The company, later renamed Oracle Corporation, released the first commercial SQL database, and the CIA was its first customer.

So what does Oracle actually do?

In simple terms, it manages information. Oracle’s databases act as the memory and brain for countless corporations and governments, handling everything from inventory and payroll to movie catalogs and financial records.

Banks, airlines, retailers, and governments all came to depend on Oracle's software to run their operations.

Ellison, admittedly the least skilled programmer of the founding trio, was pushed into sales and business leadership, where his aggressive and visionary personality thrived.

He fostered a notoriously cutthroat sales culture, summed up by the internal motto:

"GTM, GTFM" -> Get The Money, Get The F**king Money.

Ray Lane, who was second-in-command at Oracle for eight years, described the culture as "win at any cost".

His business philosophy was ruthless.

He led Oracle through a public offering in 1986, a near-bankruptcy in 1990 due to overstated revenues, and a triumphant comeback with the release of the Oracle7 database in 1992, which cemented the company's market dominance.

Over the years, Oracle has spent billions buying rivals like PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems, Sun Microsystems, NetSuite, and the healthcare data giant Cerner, absorbing their technology and market share.

A Legacy of Winning at Any Cost

Ellison's obsession with winning is legendary.

"I'm addicted to winning," he once said. "The more you win, the more you want to win".

This addiction has sometimes led him into controversial territory.

• Targeting Microsoft In the early 2000s, during a fierce rivalry with Microsoft, Ellison admitted to hiring private investigators to go through the trash of an organization funded by Microsoft, suspecting it of planting negative stories about Oracle. He defended the move by saying, "We've been slimed, and we're trying to find out who's doing the sliming."

• Insider Trading Allegations In 2001, he was hit with an insider trading lawsuit after selling nearly $900 million worth of Oracle stock just before the company announced weak earnings. While the SEC never filed charges, Ellison settled with shareholders by donating $100 million to a charity of his choice, personally pocketing the remaining hundreds of millions.

• America's Cup Scandal An avid yachtsman, his Oracle Team USA was found guilty in 2013 of tampering with their boat during the prestigious America's Cup race, a scandal that rocked the sailing world.

His longtime rival, Bill Gates, was a particular focus.

Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold once remarked, "I mean, the guy’s got six billion bucks. You’d think he wouldn’t be so dramatically obsessed that one guy in the Northwest is more successful. [With Larry] it’s just a mania".

According to me, it was Ellison’s genius to choose Gates as one of his enemies. He chose one of the best to be his enemy. Ellison respected his enemy and once complimented Bill Gates’s focus and brilliance in an interview.

Expanding the Dominion: AI, Media, and an Island Laboratory

Ellison's ambition extends far beyond enterprise software. His influence is now seeping into artificial intelligence, social media, and traditional news outlets.

The Landlord of AI

In the current AI gold rush, Ellison isn't competing to build the next ChatGPT.

Instead, he's positioning Oracle as the indispensable landlord.

AI models require immense computational power and data infrastructure to function, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides it.

Companies like Microsoft and OpenAI are partnering with Oracle to use its high-performance infrastructure for their AI workloads.

This strategy has paid off handsomely, with Oracle reporting massive back-orders from AI companies that have sent its valuation and Ellison’s net worth soaring.

The Takeover of Media and Culture

Through a combination of personal investment and family enterprise, Ellison is rapidly becoming a dominant force in American media.

• TikTok Amid national security concerns raised by the Trump administration, Oracle was positioned to become a key partner in the U.S. operations of TikTok, tasked with monitoring its algorithm to ensure data security. This gives Ellison a significant foothold in one of the world's most influential social media platforms.

• Paramount and CBS Ellison's son, David Ellison, is the founder of Skydance Media, a successful Hollywood production company behind hits like Top Gun: Maverick and the Mission: Impossible franchise. In a move that shook the media landscape, Skydance merged with Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS. This deal was approved by the FCC under the Trump administration, with which Larry Ellison has maintained a close relationship.

• Shaping the News Following the merger, reports emerged that the controversial journalist Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press, would be installed in a senior editorial role at CBS News, fueling concerns about a shift in the network's journalistic direction.

An Island Utopia

In 2012, Ellison purchased 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lānaʻi for a reported $300 million. He has described the island as a "laboratory for sustainability." However, locals have voiced concerns about being priced out as the island transforms into an exclusive enclave for the wealthy, with Ellison owning the businesses they work for and the homes they live in.

The Man Behind the Curtain

Larry Ellison has built an empire by identifying the next frontier.

First relational databases, then cloud infrastructure, and now AI and media, and aggressively conquering it.

He funds both political parties, and his influence operates on a scale that transcends partisan politics.

His network includes other powerful figures like Peter Thiel, whose data-mining firm Palantir has a strategic partnership with Oracle.

From a college dropout who questioned authority, Ellison has become one of the most powerful authorities in the world, a quiet landlord whose tenants include global corporations, government agencies, and now, the very infrastructure of our digital and cultural lives.

He once said:

“When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts”. Whether you think he’s nuts or a genius, there’s no denying he is the CEO of Everything.

The title "CEO of Everything" was given to Larry Ellison by former President Donald Trump.

My Learnings:

Studying Larry Ellison's ascent forces you to confront some uncomfortable truths about success.

• Choose Your Enemies Wisely.

• Treat Indifference as Fuel.

• Adaptability Is a Form of Aggression.

• Reality Is Malleable.

• Weaponize Your Insecurities.

• Doubt the Experts.

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Thanks for taking the time to read this deep dive into one of the most fascinating founder stories of our time.

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