1944 – Lawrence Joseph Ellison is born in New York City to 19-year-old nurse Florence Spellman; a bout of pneumonia at nine months sends him to Chicago, where aunt Lillian and her husband Louis legally adopt him.
1955 – The family settles in South Shore, and classmates recall Larry Ellison young as a boy who turned every maths drill and baseball inning into a personal contest.
1962 – He graduates from South Shore High, skips the prom for a roofing job, then points his battered car westward in search of a bigger stage.
Education
1962 – He enters the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Lillian’s death in 1964 prompts him to drop out, a moment that forever shadows stories about Larry Ellison education.
1966 – One quarter at the University of Chicago introduces him to an IBM 360; convinced real code lives outside classrooms, he drives to Berkeley and never looks back.
Career & Business
1966 – In California he writes contract software for Fireman’s Fund and Wells Fargo by day and races borrowed sailboats after dark.
1970 – Amdahl hires him at $1.65 an hour to help craft an IBM-compatible mainframe.
1973 – At Ampex he engineers a CIA database nicknamed “Oracle,” the seed that later grows into the brand permanently linked with Larry Ellison oracle.
1977 – With Bob Miner and Ed Oates he puts up $1 200 to launch Software Development Laboratories, the first entry on any list of Larry Ellison organizations founded.
1979 – The startup releases Oracle V2, the world’s first commercial SQL database.
1982 – The company rebrands as Oracle Systems, and journalists start printing Oracle Larry Ellison as though the words have always belonged together.
1986 – Oracle’s IPO at $15 a share turns his 39 percent stake into $185 million.
1990 – Creative accounting almost sinks the firm; by 1992 he slashes costs, pivots to client–server and sparks a revival.
2004 – He completes a $10.3 billion hostile takeover of PeopleSoft, kicking off a roll-up that later swallows Sun Microsystems and NetSuite.
2014 – At seventy he hands the CEO badge to Safra Catz and Mark Hurd yet remains chairman and CTO, explaining that he wants more time for code, tennis and the America’s Cup.
2020 – Oracle wins the contract to house TikTok’s U.S. data, boosting its cloud credibility.
2024 – He unveils a Generation 2 AI super-cluster in Redwood Shores, a move pundits hail as the signature Larry Ellison 2024 bet on generative tech.
2025 – He teams with NVIDIA to embed large-language-model chips inside future Exadata systems, his boldest hardware gambit since the Sun acquisition.
Politics
1997 – He bankrolls a $21 million aerial-surveillance project for Israel, describing the gift as entrepreneurial foreign aid.
2012 – A $3 million check to a Romney super-PAC accompanies a Malibu fundraiser.
2020 – He hosts a Lanai luncheon for Donald Trump but insists his allegiance lies with innovation, not parties.
2023 – On Capitol Hill he urges lawmakers to fund an AI moon-shot through richer R&D tax breaks.
Wealth
1986 – The IPO catapults his fortune past $180 million.
1993 – Oracle 7 triples sales, and his net worth clears the billion-dollar bar.
2000 – Dot-com fever briefly lifts him above Bill Gates at $58 billion.
2012 – He buys 98 percent of Lānaʻi for $300 million, stoking speculation over which Larry Ellison wife might join him on the island.
2023 – Forbes estimates Larry Ellison net worth at roughly $135 billion, placing him fourth worldwide.
2025 – Now Larry Ellison age 81, he still controls about 42 percent of Oracle through trusts and margin loans—leverage Wall Street calls the sleekest in tech.
Charity & Philanthropy
1997 – He launches the Ellison Medical Foundation with $100 million for ageing research; grants will surpass $430 million within fifteen years.
2013 – With lifetime giving above $400 million, his foundation shifts focus from gerontology to infectious-disease science.
2016 – A $200 million gift to USC establishes the Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine, anchoring Los Angeles in precision oncology.
2019 – USC honors him with the Rebels With a Cause Award as his donations exceed $260 million.
2024 – The foundation disburses a record $125 million to coral-reef genomics and AI-guided vaccine work, reinforcing headlines that Larry Ellison 2024 bankrolls science that scales.
Family & Personal Life
1944 – Adoption in Chicago plants him near Lake Michigan, where model-yacht races ignite a lifelong duel with the wind.
1967 – He marries Adda Quinn; the couple parts in 1974.
1977 – A brief marriage to Nancy Wheeler Jenkins ends the following year.
1983 – He weds Barbara Boothe; son David and daughter Megan arrive before the 1986 divorce.
2003 – He marries novelist Melanie Craft with Steve Jobs as best man; the split finalises in 2010, yet tabloids still juggle the label Larry Ellison spouse.
2012 – Lānaʻi becomes his test bed for carbon-negative farming.
2023 – He moves his primary residence to Palm Beach but spends weekends on Lanai’s solar-powered ranch.
2025 – At 81 he pilots his Gulfstream to Oracle Park, then night-sails under the Bay Bridge lights.
Scandals
1990 – Revenue tricks nearly bankrupt Oracle; cost-cutting saves the day but leaves a scar.
2001 – Investors sue over his $900 million stock sale ahead of a profit warning; regulators close the file in 2012 without penalty.
2004 – The Justice Department challenges the PeopleSoft bid; a federal judge waves it through.
2013 – A $78 million pay package sparks a shareholder revolt, forcing new performance hurdles.
2020 – The Trump fundraiser on Lānaʻi coincides with Oracle’s TikTok bid, stirring conflict-of-interest talk around Larry Ellison oracle.
2024 – Financing Skydance’s play for Paramount revives worries about billionaire sway over Hollywood.
Honors & Recognition
1997 – The American Academy of Achievement awards its Golden Plate, dubbing him Silicon Valley’s iconoclast.
2013 – The Bay Area Business Hall of Fame inducts him for four decades of growth driven by Oracle Larry Ellison.
2014 – The Computer History Museum names him a Fellow for commercialising relational databases.
2022 – The America’s Cup Hall of Fame welcomes him after three victories with USA-17.
2024 – TIME lists him among the 100 most influential people for steering Oracle into AI infrastructure.
Awards
1997 – Ernst & Young crowns him National Entrepreneur of the Year as Oracle revenue clears $3 billion.
2010 – He helms USA-17 to win the 33rd America’s Cup, lifting sport’s oldest trophy.
2016 – The Horatio Alger Association honors him for rising from Chicago’s South Side to tech royalty.
2022 – America’s Cup Hall of Fame ceremonies salute his twin legacies in software and sailing.
