Larry Ellison’s Distractions

Ellison’s love of sailing is no secret, but this year his Oracle Team USA racing team reached new heights of glory with an unprecedented come-from-behind victory over New Zealand, taking home the America’s Cup. The CEO was so eager to see his team’s climactic races that he ended up skipping a keynote he was supposed to deliver at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference, to the irritation of many customers.

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Ellison wasn’t content with owning just a Hawaiian island. He wanted, and got, his own commercial airline as well. We assume he flies first class. Oh wait, Ellison bought a second one as well.

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Ellison’s love of Japan is well known, and he’s also got a penchant for collecting works of Japanese art. His collection reportedly includes several hundred pieces, more than 60 of which were on display this year at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

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If there’s one aspect of Oracle Ellison is definitely paying close attention to, it’s the hardware business. Since Oracle bought Sun Microsystems it has de-emphasized commodity servers in favor of high-end boxes like Exadata, but hardware revenues continue to fall. Ellison is no doubt eager for the day when Oracle shows serious growth in hardware.

Ellison may be one of the biggest stars in enterprise technology but his children, David and Megan, are making a name for themselves in Hollywood. Their production companies are behind hits like World War Z and Zero Dark Thirty.

Ellison’s known for his outlandish spending sprees but his purchase of Hawaiian island Lanai may rank at the top. But he didn’t spend $500 million on the island just to sit on the beach. In fact, Ellison is planning to turn the island into a green technology research hub.

Ellison loves beautiful women at least as much as he does fabulous homes, yachts and fast cars. Divorced a number of times, Ellison has been spotted in the company lately of actress and model Nikita Kahn.

Ellison recently turned 69 and is hoping to live quite a bit longer, to the point where he’s funded the Ellison Medical Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on anti-aging research.