For decades, Larry Ellison was Silicon Valley’s enfant terrible, the swaggering Oracle co-founder who raced yachts, built mansions inspired by Japanese emperors, and dated as flamboyantly as he bought real estate. Oracle, the database company that made him one of the world’s richest men, was rarely the star of the show. Ellison was. Now, at 80, Ellison has traded in that Playboy image for something even more audacious: building one of the largest media empires on the planet.
From Databases to Hollywood lots
Earlier this year, his son David Ellison’s Skydance Media closed an $8 billion merger with Paramount Global. The deal handed Ellisons control of CBS News, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Pictures — iconic brands that touch everything from children’s cartoons to nightly broadcasts.
It was a striking pivot for a man whose fortune came from enterprise software, but it is unlikely to be his last. Paramount Skydance is now rumoured to be weighing a $70 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. That would bring DC Comics, Harry Potter, Barbie, CNN, and HBO under the Ellison umbrella. Barclays estimates such a merger would make Paramount Skydance–Warner Bros. the largest studio in the world, commanding streaming platforms with more than 200 million subscribers.
TikTok: The next piece of the puzzle
Amid the Hollywood manoeuvring, Ellison has also resurfaced in Washington’s battle over TikTok. After U.S.-China talks in Madrid last week, President Donald Trump teased a deal that would “save” a company beloved by young Americans. A report by WSJ also suggests that the Oracle consortium is acquiring an 80% stake in TikTok in the US.
Oracle nearly became part-owner of TikTok in 2020, tasked with safeguarding American user data. While that deal fizzled, Oracle still hosts TikTok’s U.S. data on its cloud. Trump has since suggested Oracle’s offer remains on the table, and Ellison is again in the conversation. For Ellison, TikTok would not just be a consumer platform; it would be a vast new source of data.
Politics and power
Ellison’s moves mirror those of his friend Elon Musk, who parlayed Twitter (now X) into a political megaphone, as mentioned by Fast Company. Like Musk, Ellison has grown close to Trump. The two appeared together at the White House in January for the launch of “Stargate,” an AI infrastructure project backed by Oracle. This budding friendship is a greater bridge that leads the country into the lap of artificial intelligence, which, according to Elliso, will bring an era of bounty and harmony, the NYT reported.
Critics see danger in this growing nexus of politics, wealth, and media. “It is not a sign of a healthy democracy when billionaires are buying up all of the means of cultural consumption,” said Steven Buckley, lecturer in media and digital sociology at City, St George’s, University of London, told Fast Company.
If the Paramount and Warner Bros. tie-up succeeds, and if TikTok ends up in his orbit, Ellison would control a sprawling empire: the world’s biggest movie franchises, one of America’s oldest news networks, a top-tier cable outlet in CNN, and one of the most downloaded app on earth.
That’s a remarkable evolution for a man once better known for his yachts and bravado than for his boardroom strategy. But perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising. Ellison has always chased relevance. Musk did it with rockets, EVs, and social media. Ellison is now doing it with movies, newsrooms, and the world’s hottest short-video app.