A year of Trump

Oracle

That's who Larry Ellison is, Trump's new oracle of tech America who undermined Musk

From overtaking Musk to the race on artificial intelligence: how the Oracle founder became the billionaire symbol of the new American political season

by Silvia Martelli

11 September 2025

Larry Ellison (Photo by TORU YAMANAKA / AFP)

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

For years the spotlight has been on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Today, however, it is Larry Ellison who is taking centre stage: the 81-year-old founder of Oracle who, thanks to the boom in artificial intelligence, has risen to the top of the richest list and has established himself as a new key ally of Donald Trump.

Ellison, who owns 40 per cent of Oracle and 98 per cent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, has never been just an entrepreneur. A personal friend of Donald Trump, a backer of Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of Sam Altman and Masayoshi Son in the maxi-data centre project 'Stargate', he has become the man the White House is counting on to ensure US technological supremacy in the age of artificial intelligence. And while Musk is paying the political and financial price for his choices, Trump has found in Ellison the new tech champion to rely on.

The Oracle Empire and the ride into AI

Born in 1977 from a contract with the CIA to build a database, Oracle has experienced a unique parable. For decades identified with enterprise information systems, then with the cloud, today it is the company that Wall Street bets can become the central infrastructure of artificial intelligence.

In the last three months alone, the contract portfolio has risen from $138 billion to $455 billion. At the heart is the five-year, $300 billion deal with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which chose Oracle's data centres when Microsoft could not guarantee sufficient capacity. But customers also include Meta, Nvidia and Musk's own xAI.

The masterstroke, however, remains Stargate: a $500 billion project in Texas, which sees Oracle together with SoftBank and OpenAI engaged in building an energy and computing infrastructure never attempted before. Not surprisingly, the official launch took place in Washington, with Trump on stage.

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Trump's man

The political thread has accompanied Ellison's career for years. Already in his first presidential term he attended dinners at Mar-a-Lago and meetings in the Oval Office. Trump has publicly praised him as 'an extraordinary man and an incredible entrepreneur'.

Today, that closeness translates into strategic dossiers: Oracle is the favoured candidate to acquire the US operations of TikTok, which risk a ban if they do not separate from ByteDance. Asked if Musk could buy TikTok, Trump replied: 'I'd love for Larry to do it'.

The change of balance is evident: if Musk, worn down by political controversies and Tesla's decline, has moved away from the Trumpian orbit, Ellison has taken his place as a stable and reliable ally.

Media, Israel and Lanai

Ellison's influence also extends to the media. He financed the 8 billion operation with which his son David created Paramount Skydance, a conglomerate that controls CBS, MTV and Paramount Pictures. An investment that opens up new intersections between business, culture and politics in a polarised America.

On the international front, Ellison has cultivated a close relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu and donated over $16 million to the Israel Defence Forces in 2017. On the personal front, he bought 98 per cent of the island of Lanai in 2012, turning it into a laboratory for exclusive tourism and hydroponic farming.

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A billionaire larger-than-life

After 37 years as CEO, Ellison is now president and chief technology officer of Oracle. He has four marriages behind him, a passion for yachts and private planes, and a lifestyle that fuels the myth of the larger-than-life billionaire. Musk called him 'the smartest person I have ever met'.

Yet, paradoxically, it is the pupil who has fallen behind. If Musk embodies volatility and political exposure, Ellison has been able to build a new balance between business and power. In Trump's America, he is the oracle that politics and finance look to.