Technology scene in 2025: Oracle Corporation (ORCL.US) overshadows Musk in the limelight.

Notice that as of the beginning of 2025, a billionaire closely associated with the White House seems destined to become the most watched tech giant of the year. However, after a tumultuous 12 months, Larry Ellison, rather than Elon Musk, has every reason to deserve this title. The 81-year-old co-founder and chairman of Oracle Corporation (ORCL.US) has been everywhere - from the frenzy of artificial intelligence (or bubble) to shaking up Hollywood with massive deals, he has played a role in almost all major business news of the year. Oracle Corporation even planned to invest in TikTok as part of a convoluted plan to help Trump intervene in this popular video app. In the process, Ellison's wealth has fluctuated with Oracle Corporation's stock price - this has become a "hotness curve" of this turbulent era. The year kicked off with the launch of "Stargate", perhaps the most ambitious of all data center projects. On January 21, the second day of the inauguration ceremony, the president appeared at the White House with Ellison, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son, announcing a $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure construction plan. That day was filled with various exaggerated rhetoric - "100,000 jobs!" - and some skeptics believed that this large sum was more of a grand vision. Subsequently, Oracle Corporation began historic scale expansions of data centers optimized for artificial intelligence, progress ahead of some people's expectations. This attempt led to the company's cash flow turning negative for the first time since the early 1990s. However, Ellison, who was famous 15 years ago for missing the cloud computing revolution, suddenly became an artificial intelligence enthusiast. In the summer, OpenAI signed a deal worth approximately $300 billion to rent a large amount of computing power from Oracle Corporation, making this leading artificial intelligence lab Oracle Corporation's largest customer. In September, when Oracle Corporation disclosed the full scale of its OpenAI business, investors were thrilled. Ellison's net worth skyrocketed by $89 billion in a single day to $388 billion, the largest single-day jump recorded in the billionaire index. This temporarily surpassed Musk, making him briefly the world's richest person. His rapidly growing wealth perfectly matched his son David's ambition to become a Hollywood tycoon. In August, David Ellison's Skydance Media finally completed a deal to gain control of Paramount, mainly funded by his father. Influenced by changes in the artificial intelligence market sentiment, Oracle Corporation's stock fluctuated drastically in 2025. A few weeks after completing the Paramount deal, David Ellison set his sights on Warner Bros. Discovery, proposing to take over this company with rights to Batman, Harry Potter, and Looney Tunes. His father proposed to assist in financing the deal and personally lobbied Warner Bros. executives. However, ultimately, this was all in vain. Warner Bros. rejected Paramount Sky's bid and accepted Netflix's offer. Little Ellison then initiated a hostile takeover - a tactic his father used when taking over the software company PeopleSoft in the early 21st century. Paramount's second bid was again rejected, with Warner Bros. expressing doubts about the company's ability to fulfill the equity portion of the bid. In response, Larry Ellison agreed to provide personal guarantees for $40.4 billion in financing. Even for him, this was a lot of money. In recent months, Ellison's wealth has shrunk due to a drop in Oracle Corporation's stock price. Many investors are skeptical about overall artificial intelligence spending, and believe Oracle Corporation is particularly vulnerable compared to peers, as it has accumulated massive debt to fund the data center construction boom and a large part of its future business is reliant on OpenAI. Ellison is currently the world's fifth-richest person, with a net worth just below $250 billion. Therefore, he has enough assets to fulfill this guarantee multiple times. However, given that his assets are highly concentrated in Oracle Corporation stock, it is currently unclear how much cash he could immediately access if required to provide the full $40.4 billion in funding, increasing the possibility that he may have to resort to selling stock or pledging more shares. Before 2025, Ellison mainly used his money to collect "trophies" - including planes, yachts, real estate in Malibu, and most of the land on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. He had ventured into Hollywood by supporting his children's films. Now, his wealth is tightly intertwined with the fiercely competitive artificial intelligence market and a Hollywood company led by his son.