Larry Ellison is not the most well-known tech billionaire. He is not the most popular. He is likely not the most admired. He may be the most captivating.

Ellison was born poor, dropped out of college twice, failed repeatedly in his 20s before building one of the most successful technology companies of all time through force of will, sheer competitive drive, and a refusal to believe anything was impossible. He races sailboats around the world, flies fighter jets, owns the majority of an island in Hawaii, and has been married and divorced four times.
He is, by all accounts from those who’ve met him, 100% Larry Ellison, all the time.
The Paper That Started Oracle
While reading the latest computer research journals at Berkeley in 1977, Ellison stumbled across a paper published by IBM researchers outlining a theoretical machine for storing and retrieving data using a language known as SQL.
The document described a relational database that could store information in an organized way and allow for powerful queries against that information.
This database, which did not yet exist commercially, would become one of the most fundamental technologies businesses would use to run their companies.
Ever.
In fact, IBM, the largest technology company in the world at the time, was inexplicably not developing this technology as a product.
So Ellison decided he would build it himself.
In 1977, Ellison co-founded Software Development Laboratories with two partners. Bob Miner and Ed Oates. Ellison contributed $2,000 of his own money to the new venture. The company would later be renamed Oracle Corporation—after an early CIA database project Ellison worked on—and begin work on creating the first commercial relational database.
They would beat IBM to market with a working product. It caught on quickly. Businesses around the world needed it and bought it.
Oracle skyrocketed, then rocketed some more, quickly becoming one of the most important technology companies in existence.

How Oracle Was Built

For decades, Oracle was the company that provided relational database software to anyone who needed it. Banks, governments, airlines, hospitals, corporations of all kinds — Oracle was the backbone of all their data systems.
Along the way, Ellison built a reputation as a hard-driving competitor who ran Oracle with unmatched intensity. He was known to be difficult — remarkably bright but sometimes unreasonable, quirky, and driven to succeed at all costs. He set improbable goals and expected that he would meet them. He fought with everyone.
He was also a product visionary with an uncanny ability to understand how technology would develop and shift Oracle to always be one step ahead of the curve.
While Ellison made plenty of enemies in the tech world, it seemed to have little effect on him. He famously took thinly veiled jabs at Bill Gates throughout their careers and was engaged in a very public rivalry with the Microsoft founder that spanned decades. Oracle similarly clashed with companies like SAP and IBM throughout its history.
Doing business with Ellison was, from most accounts of those who’ve competed with him, a terrible idea.
By the turn of the century, Oracle was a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Ellison had turned a $2,000 investment into one of the largest companies in the world while ballooning his personal net worth to match.
Larry Ellison
Born August 17, 1944 · New York City
Co-founder & CTO · Oracle Corporation · Founded 1977
Net worth ~$180 billion · Age 2026
Owner of ~98% of Lanai, Hawaii