Larry Ellison

It’s been more than a decade since Larry Ellison stepped down from his CEO post at Oracle, and nearly half a century since he cofounded the software giant. But the billionaire still looms large over Silicon Valley, even if it is from his private island in Hawaii. He remains chief technology officer and executive chairman at Oracle, and the database and cloud company saw a strong stock market rally over the past year boosted by demand for generative AI—adding to Ellison’s $200-billion-plus net worth. Ellison now has a toehold in Hollywood, too, with his son, David Ellison, set to take over as Paramount CEO through an $8 billion Paramount-Skydance merger. The elder Ellison helped fund the deal, but Paramount recently clarified that David will have voting control.