Return of Larry Ellison: the god of Silicon Valley

Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, was a pioneer of the US tech scene in the 1970s. The AI boom has given him a new lease of life.

Larry Ellison attends the Rebels With A Cause Gala 2019
(Image credit: Getty Images)

There are plenty of videos on YouTube extolling Larry Ellison as “The God of Silicon Valley”. Some (though probably not Ellison himself) might quibble, but, in an industry fixated on youth, the Oracle founder, 79, is certainly a Grand Old Man. A pioneer of the 1970s Valley scene, he has steered his database company through every twist and turn of the industry since staging more apparently improbable comebacks than any of his vaunted peers.

Larry Ellison's rebirth

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.