Five Takeaways From the Times Investigation Into Larry Ellison’s A.I. Gamble

Last September, Larry Ellison briefly became the richest person in the world, after steering Oracle, the data and software storage company he founded, into the new world of A.I. But Ellison’s big bet on A.I. was built on an astronomical amount of debt — with implications far beyond the company.

How did Ellison, at 81, go from being the star of the first formal news conference of the second Trump administration — where the president announced “the largest A.I. infrastructure project by far in history” and said his friend Larry Ellison was just the man to get it done — to the richest person in the world to the most vulnerable player in the increasingly volatile A.I. game?

We reported from Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Hawaii and New York; interviewed dozens of people close to Ellison and Oracle, as well as financial analysts and former national security officials; and reviewed financial filings, analyst reports and court records. Our investigation shows how Ellison, basking in a quieter existence on his own private Hawaiian island just a few years ago, was so startled by the arrival of ChatGPT in 2022 that he took back control of Oracle, courted the Trump administration (which eased restrictions and ignored laws barring his way) and took on increasingly ominous loads of debt — to bet everything on A.I.

Here are five takeaways from our article in The Times Magazine.

Ellison was desperate not to get left behind in the A.I. gold rush.

Ellison’s effort began in late 2022, when the launch of ChatGPT set in motion a race to control the most transformative new technology since the dawn of the internet. Ellison had been enjoying life on his Hawaiian island, having children with his decades-younger partner, but once he grasped what the moment held, he began a two-year scramble to remake Oracle as an A.I. juggernaut.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/magazine/takeaways-larry-ellison-oracle-ai.html