Mr. Larry Ellison Briefly Became the Richest Man in the World

Larry Ellison briefly became the richest man in the world this year after Oracle’s stock surged to around $345 per share. Since then, the stock has fallen to roughly $188, wiping out more than $180 billion in paper wealth. That drop is staggering by any standard.

And yet, despite the loss, Ellison’s power has not diminished. In fact, it has expanded.

In August 2025, Skydance Media completed its acquisition of Paramount Global, creating a new entity now known as Skydance Paramount. The deal was funded by Larry Ellison, even though the company is formally controlled by his son, David Ellison. With that acquisition, an extraordinary number of media properties were brought under one roof: Paramount Pictures, Paramount+, Showtime, CBS, Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, and more.

While David Ellison is often presented as the face of this media empire, the reality is that this consolidation represents an extension of Larry Ellison’s broader portfolio. Through Oracle, Ellison already controls massive portions of global data infrastructure. With Skydance Paramount, he now controls a significant share of American media production and distribution.

This concentration of power becomes more troubling when viewed alongside Ellison’s political relationships. Larry Ellison is ethnically Jewish, though not religiously observant, yet he has been one of the largest private donors to the Israeli Defense Forces, contributing tens of millions of dollars over the years. He is also a close personal friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vacationed with his family on Ellison’s private Hawaiian island. Their relationship spans decades and extends into legal and political matters, including Netanyahu’s corruption trial.

If a U.S. billionaire maintained this level of financial, personal, and political intimacy with the leadership and military of China, it would provoke immediate outrage. Yet in this case, the response has largely been silence. The double standard is difficult to ignore.

The situation grows even more concerning when TikTok enters the picture.

Following a 2024 congressional ban and renewed trade negotiations with China, the Trump administration pressured ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations to a consortium of American companies. The largest financial stake in that consortium belongs to Oracle. Not only does Oracle hold the biggest ownership share, it also hosts all U.S. TikTok data on its servers. Even more consequential, Oracle alone was granted access to TikTok’s proprietary algorithm, with authority to modify it for American users.

This means that one company — already deeply embedded in U.S. government contracting and now heavily invested in mainstream media — controls the infrastructure, data, and recommendation engine of the most influential social media platform in the country. The implications are enormous. Algorithms shape what people see, what ideas spread, and which voices are amplified or silenced.

This is no longer a theoretical concern about influence. It is operational power.

What we are witnessing is vertical integration at an unprecedented scale. Content is created in studios owned by the Ellison family. That content is licensed and distributed by companies they control. It is aired on television networks and streaming platforms they own. It is promoted and circulated on a social media platform whose data, algorithm, and backend infrastructure are controlled by Oracle.

Every step of the media supply chain, from creation to distribution to amplification, runs through the same family-controlled ecosystem.

And the consolidation does not stop there.

After Skydance Paramount’s acquisition of CBS, the company made key editorial hires clearly aimed at reducing adversarial coverage of Donald Trump. At the same time, Skydance Paramount launched a bid to acquire Warner Bros., setting off an auction that drew in Netflix. Warner Bros. ultimately agreed to a deal with Netflix for its studios and streaming services, but the transaction now awaits regulatory approval from the Trump administration.

Here lies the leverage.

Warner Bros. owns CNN, a network Trump has long despised. The Ellisons have reportedly suggested that if they acquire Warner Bros., CNN would be reshaped into a more Trump-friendly outlet. This puts the president in a position to decide whether media consolidation benefits his political interests. The supposed neutrality of antitrust enforcement becomes questionable when personal relationships, political loyalty, and media influence intersect so directly.

At this point, the question is no longer whether this concentration of power is unusual. It is whether it is compatible with a functioning democracy.

Media is arguably the most powerful force in modern society. It shapes public opinion, frames reality, and defines the boundaries of acceptable discourse. When that power is concentrated in the hands of a single corporate network with deep political and foreign-state entanglements, the risk is obvious.

This is not about left versus right. It is about whether a democratic society can tolerate a system in which one private interest controls studios, networks, streaming platforms, social media infrastructure, user data, and algorithms, while simultaneously wielding immense political influence.

If this were happening under Chinese ownership, the alarm bells would be deafening. The fact that they are not ringing now should trouble everyone.

The question remains open, and urgent: Should this be allowed?

These studies and writings are are not meant to portray hate to anyone or heritage, far from it. But it has so much to do with learning about business, politics and power. In fact, it helps you understand how the world really works. 

Take care

Pal Ronnie