Larry Ellison dominated 2025 news cycles through Oracle’s AI deals, TikTok ambitions, and Hollywood financing

Oracle’s Larry El owned 2025 for reasons that had nothing to do with calm execution or clean wins. The year opened with expectations that Elon Musk would dominate tech headlines again. That did not happen.

By December, Oracle’s chairman had touched almost every major business story tied to Washington, AI spending, media deals, and volatile markets.

The 81-year-old Larry [naturally] stayed close to the White House as Donald Trump returned as president. Oracle explored taking a stake in TikTok as part of a plan tied to Trump’s effort to keep the app operating in the US.

At the same time, Oracle stock turned into a daily scoreboard for Ellison’s wealth, swinging hard as investors chased and then questioned the company’s AI ambitions.

Oracle builds Stargate and locks in OpenAI as its biggest client

January set the tone. On Jan. 21, one day after Trump’s inauguration, Trump stood at the White House with Larry, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, and SoftBank head Masa Son.

The group announced Stargate, a $500 billion plan to build AI data centers across the US. The announcement included claims of 100,000 jobs and massive long-term investment. Some analysts doubted the numbers from the start.

Oracle moved fast anyway. The company began a large-scale buildout of AI-focused data centers. The spending pushed Oracle’s cash flow negative for the first time since the early 1990s. That reversal stood out because Larry had skipped the cloud boom years earlier. In 2025, he leaned into AI instead of watching from the sidelines.

By summer, Oracle landed its biggest deal yet. OpenAI agreed to rent roughly $300 billion worth of computing power from Oracle. The contract positioned OpenAI as Oracle’s largest customer.

In September, Oracle disclosed how large the commitment really was. Investors reacted immediately. Oracle shares jumped almost 36 percent on Sept. 10, the third sharpest rally since the company’s 1986 IPO. The stock hit an intraday record of $345.72.

That single day added $89 billion to Larry’s net worth, lifting it to $388 billion. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index recorded it as the largest one-day wealth increase ever. For a brief moment, he passed Musk as the richest person alive.

Zachary Lountzis, vice president at Lountzis Asset Management, in an interview, said they are extremely bullish on ORCL. In his words:-

“Our philosophy is that we’re OK with short-term overvaluation if the economics of the business have not changed, and that was the case with Oracle. We didn’t feel the economics of the business changed with all the largely positive news that came out. And I think what we’ve seen from $340 down to $180 is actually a very healthy correction.”

Stock collapse, leadership changes, and pressure on cash follow

The surge in wealth overlapped with a media deal at home. In August, David Ellison, Larry’s son, closed Skydance Media’s takeover of Paramount. The acquisition relied heavily on funding from Ellison Senior, tying Hollywood control to Oracle’s chairman during the same year his tech bets peaked.

Then the slide began. About three months ago, Oracle appointed Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as co-chief executives, replacing Safra Catz. The timing was rough.

Oracle shares have fallen about 30 percent this quarter. With only days left, the decline is tracking toward the company’s worst quarterly drop since the 2001 dot-com crash.

Two weeks before the leadership handoff, Oracle reported a 359 percent revenue backlog tied largely to the OpenAI agreement.

The deal validated Oracle’s AI push even as the company remained outside Gartner’s top five cloud infrastructure providers for 2024. Oracle still trails Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in market share, despite customers that include Meta, Uber, and Elon Musk’s xAI.

Wells Fargo analyst Michael Turrin initiated coverage this month with a buy equivalent and a $280 target. He said Oracle could change how the market views the business if it delivers on OpenAI.

“They’re kind of shifting away from more of a value oriented business to a more growth oriented business,” Michael said.

Today, Larry ranks as the world’s fifth richest person with just under $250 billion. Most of that wealth sits in Oracle stock. If he were required to provide the full $40.4 billion backstop tied to the OpenAI deal, cash access remains unclear. Meeting that obligation could force him to sell shares or pledge more stock, extending the risk into 2026.