Larry Ellison's Fifth Spouse and the Unexpected Turns in the Life of a Tech Billionaire

On September 10, 2025, when 81-year-old Larry Ellison officially became the world’s richest person with a net worth of $393 billion, the spotlight didn’t just illuminate his business acumen—it also cast light on his unconventional personal life. Among the many surprising aspects of Larry Ellison’s story is his marriage to Jolin Zhu, a Chinese-American woman 47 years his junior, making her his fifth spouse. This latest matrimonial chapter raises a fascinating question: how does a man build a global technology empire while navigating one of the most eventful personal lives in the billionaire community?

The Founder Who Saw Digital Gold Where Others Saw Code

Larry Ellison’s journey to becoming the world’s richest man began not with inherited wealth, but with abandonment. Born in 1944 in the Bronx to an unmarried 19-year-old mother, Ellison was adopted at nine months by his aunt’s family in Chicago. Growing up in a struggling household, he nevertheless pursued higher education, first at the University of Illinois and then at the University of Chicago—though he never completed a degree, dropping out during his sophomore year after his adoptive mother’s death.

The turning point came in the early 1970s when Ellison, then a young programmer, joined Ampex Corporation and worked on a groundbreaking project: building a database system for the CIA. This experience crystallized something crucial in his mind—the commercial potential of databases. In 1977, the 32-year-old Ellison, along with Bob Miner and Ed Oates, invested just $2,000 to establish Software Development Laboratories (SDL), which would eventually become Oracle.

What made Ellison different wasn’t that he invented database technology—he didn’t. Rather, he was the first person to recognize its enormous commercial value and bet his future on it. While competitors dismissed databases as a niche technical tool, Ellison envisioned them as the backbone of enterprise computing. This vision proved prescient. When Oracle went public on NASDAQ in 1986, it became an instant star in the enterprise software market. Over four decades, Ellison remained synonymous with the company, holding nearly every leadership position: president from 1978 to 1996, chairman, and eventually stepping down as CEO in 2014 while retaining the titles of Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer—positions he holds today.

From Traditional Software to AI Infrastructure: A Strategic Pivot in the AI Era

By 2025, Oracle faced a familiar challenge: it had lagged behind Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure during the early cloud computing boom. But this time, Ellison positioned the company differently. In September 2025, Oracle announced a monumental $300 billion five-year partnership with OpenAI, and its stock surged more than 40% in a single day—the largest one-day gain since 1992.

Concurrent with this announcement, Oracle undertook massive organizational changes, laying off thousands of employees in traditional hardware sales and legacy software divisions while simultaneously investing billions into data centers and AI infrastructure. The strategic message was unmistakable: Oracle was pivoting from a “traditional enterprise software vendor” to become what industry analysts now call a “dark horse in AI infrastructure.” This move wasn’t reactive scrambling—it was Ellison reading the market once more, betting that as generative AI reshapes industries, the demand for robust data center infrastructure and computational backbone would be insatiable. In many ways, this pivot mirrored his original insight: recognizing value in infrastructure that others take for granted.

The Ellison Family Dynasty: Tech Meets Hollywood

Ellison’s wealth and influence haven’t remained personal—they’ve evolved into a family enterprise spanning multiple industries. His son, David Ellison, recently orchestrated the $8 billion acquisition of Paramount Global (the parent company of CBS and MTV), with $6 billion coming from Ellison family funds. This deal represents a deliberate expansion: while Larry Ellison built an empire in Silicon Valley’s technology sector, David is now building one in Hollywood’s entertainment sector.

Meanwhile, Larry Ellison has maintained a significant political presence. A longtime Republican supporter, he financed Marco Rubio’s 2015 presidential campaign and donated $15 million to Senator Tim Scott’s Super PAC in 2022. In January 2026, he appeared alongside SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the White House to announce a $500 billion initiative to build a network of AI data centers—a moment that underscored not merely commercial ambition but the convergence of business and political influence.

Beyond the Boardroom: The Adventurous Life That Contradicts Age

What makes the 81-year-old Ellison remarkable isn’t just his business acumen—it’s the stark contradiction between his demanding corporate discipline and his passion-driven personal pursuits. He owns 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, several sprawling California estates, and some of the world’s finest yachts. His relationship with water and wind borders on obsessive.

In 1992, Ellison nearly died surfing—an accident most would consider a wake-up call to abandon risk-taking. Yet it didn’t slow him down. Instead, he channeled his adventurous energy into competitive sailing. In 2013, Oracle Team USA staged one of sailing history’s most dramatic comebacks to win the America’s Cup, with Ellison’s financial backing and strategic involvement driving the effort. In 2018, he founded SailGP, a high-speed catamaran racing league that has attracted star investors including actress Anne Hathaway and football legend Mbappé.

Tennis also captivated him. Ellison revitalized the Indian Wells tournament in California and famously called it the “fifth Grand Slam”—a description that captures both his ambition and his willingness to bend sporting convention to his vision.

Yet beneath this image of reckless adventure lies an iron discipline. According to former executives who worked at Ellison’s ventures, he spent several hours daily exercising during his 1990s and 2000s peak. His diet consisted almost exclusively of water and green tea, with virtually no sugary drinks. This regimen has kept him looking remarkably youthful—observers often remark he appears “20 years younger than his peers.” At 81, Ellison embodies a paradox: the disciplined lifestyle of an ascetic combined with the risk-taking appetite of a thrill-seeker.

The Marriage Narrative: A Pattern of Serial Matrimony

Ellison’s personal relationships have been as eventful as his business ventures. He has been married five times, with each marriage receiving varying degrees of public attention. In 2024, he quietly married Jolin Zhu, marking his fifth marriage. Zhu, born in Shenyang, China, graduated from the University of Michigan. The marriage became public knowledge only after a University of Michigan document mentioned a donation from “Larry Ellison and his wife, Jolin.”

The pairing sparked considerable internet commentary. Some observers joked that Ellison loves both surfing and romance with equal passion. Others noted the age gap of 47 years—hardly unusual for a man of Ellison’s wealth and status, but striking nonetheless. Yet the marriage also reflects something deeper about Ellison’s personality: his refusal to be constrained by conventional expectations. While many billionaires court respectability through philanthropic gravitas, Ellison lives as he wishes, remarrying without apology or extended courtship periods.

His pattern of marriages—five in total—suggests someone perpetually seeking connection yet unwilling to compromise his mercurial nature. Whether Jolin Zhu represents a more lasting partnership or merely the latest chapter in Ellison’s romantic autobiography remains to be seen. What’s clear is that his approach to marriage mirrors his approach to business: bold, unconventional, and unapologetically his own.

Philanthropy on His Own Terms

Unlike Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, Ellison signed the Giving Pledge in 2010 committing to donate at least 95% of his wealth, yet he has maintained a distinctly different philanthropic philosophy. As he told The New York Times, he “cherishes his solitude and refuses to be influenced by outside ideas.” This individualistic approach shows in his giving.

In 2016, Ellison donated $200 million to the University of Southern California to establish a cancer research center. More recently, he announced his intention to direct wealth toward the Ellison Institute of Technology, a joint venture with Oxford University focused on healthcare, food systems, and climate technology. His stated vision is clear: “We will design a new generation of lifesaving drugs, build low-cost agricultural systems, and develop efficient and clean energy.”

Unlike peers who often join collaborative philanthropic initiatives, Ellison prefers to independently architect his charitable legacy. His giving reflects his personality—personal, ambitious, and designed around his own vision of what the world needs rather than consensus views.

The Legacy of Larry Ellison: How the Oldest New Billionaire Changed the Game

At 81, Larry Ellison finally claimed the title of world’s richest person. His journey—from a rejected orphan to a billionaire who married for the fifth time—defies the conventional narrative of wealth accumulation. He began with a CIA contract, transformed it into a database monopoly, and then recognized the AI wave early enough to position Oracle as crucial infrastructure for a new era.

What’s remarkable about Ellison isn’t simply his business success or his wealth. It’s his refusal to fit into categories. He’s simultaneously adventurous and disciplined, rebellious and strategic, emotionally unpredictable and calculating. His marriages—including his most recent union with Jolin Zhu—underscore this duality: a man wealthy enough to marry whom he wishes, yet emotionally volatile enough to do so repeatedly.

As AI reshapes the technology industry, Ellison’s legacy reminds us that the pioneers of one era often become irrelevant in the next—unless they refuse to stop evolving. He did. The title of world’s richest person may soon pass to someone else, as these rankings constantly shift. But for now, Larry Ellison has demonstrated that even in an age of AI-driven transformation, the vision and audacity of an older generation of tech moguls remains very much relevant.