Larry Ellison in the Spotlight

Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison is suddenly the tech executive in the center of the action. Not only did Oracle bring back TikTok on Sunday, the aging tech firm also got a headline role, along with SoftBank and OpenAI, in President Donald Trump’s Tuesday announcement of an artificial intelligence data center project that will cost up to $500 billion over the next four years. 

Trump’s admiration for Ellison was evident at today’s press briefing for the venture: The president called Ellison an “amazing man” who is more than just a technology executive—he’s a “CEO of everything.” The irony, of course, is that Oracle, with a market capitalization of $480 billion, is tiny compared with Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The three leaders in the cloud industry are each worth between $2.4 trillion and $3.2 trillion each.