Larry Ellison’s name isn’t always mentioned alongside more public-facing megabillionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg. But as he vaults to the top of the U.S. power elite after a string of high-profile corporate deals, that’s about to change.
Ellison, the founder of the tech giant Oracle, is quickly emerging as the new face of oligarchic power in the U.S. Oracle has become an AI powerhouse at the same time Ellison and his son David have acquired Paramount and its vast media empire. With Donald Trump’s recent executive order, Ellison and Oracle will also now oversee TikTok’s algorithms, shaping a platform that reaches 150 million U.S. users.
What’s more alarming than Ellison’s sheer wealth — in September, he briefly surpassed Musk as the world’s richest person — is that he’s building his concentrated power and control in collaboration with the Trumpian project of attacking so-called “wokeness,” all while supercharging the corporate expansion of artificial intelligence and tech surveillance.
Hellbound and Down 