Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 and serves as its Chief Technology Officer and largest individual shareholder, with a net worth consistently above $100 billion that ranks him among the five wealthiest people in the world. Born August 17, 1944, in New York City, and raised in Chicago, Ellison attended the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago before dropping out and moving to California, where he built Oracle from a database software company into one of the most important enterprise technology corporations in the world. Oracle's database systems underpin the IT infrastructure of the global economy, and the company's cloud division has become a significant player in cloud computing alongside Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

Ellison's connection to Israel is personal as well as commercial. He has spoken publicly about his Jewish identity, his concern for Israel's security, and the significance of the Holocaust to his worldview. Oracle Israel is one of the company's most productive and largest R&D centers, employing thousands of Israeli engineers and computer scientists and producing technology contributions that have flowed into Oracle's global product lines. Israel's emergence as a global center for cybersecurity technology has particular relevance for Oracle, which has made significant Israeli cybersecurity acquisitions. Ellison has been a personal donor to pro-Israel causes and to research institutions in Israel, and has made public statements in support of Israel's right to defend itself.

His significance on the Iron 100 reflects scale: Oracle's Israel operations are not a marginal R&D outpost but a structural part of one of the world's largest technology companies, employing and investing in Israeli technical talent at a level that creates economic and institutional interdependence beyond any diplomatic declaration. When Ellison stands behind Israel, he stands behind it as the CTO of a corporation with billions of dollars of Israeli operations. At Rank 42, Ellison represents the technology mogul whose economic stake in Israeli innovation translates into both personal advocacy and institutional investment that outlasts any single political moment.