Larry Ellison

Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who is co-founder of Oracle Corporation and was CEO from its founding until September 2014. He is the executive chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle. As of February 2017, he was listed by Forbes magazine as the fifth-wealthiest person in America and as the seventh-wealthiest in the world, with a fortune of $55 billion. Ellison was born in New York City and grew up in Chicago. He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Chicago without graduating before moving to California in 1966. While working at Ampex in the early 1970s, he became influenced by Edgar F. Codd's research on relational database design, which led in 1977 to the formation of what became Oracle. Oracle became a successful database vendor to mid- and low-range systems, competing with Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server, which led to Ellison being listed by Forbes as one of the richest men in the world. Ellison has donated up to 1% of his wealth to charity and has signed The Giving Pledge. In addition to his work at Oracle, Ellison has had success in yachting, through Oracle Team USA. He is a licensed aircraft pilot who owns two military jets.