Do we like them?Do we like Larry Ellison?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Big money behind a political and media power grab, a Giving Pledge, and no harmful words of his own that we could find.
Larry Ellison is the Oracle co-founder, born in New York in 1944 and raised in Chicago. Profiles describe a rough start and a college dropout who built a database business into a giant. He stepped back as CEO in 2014 but still runs the show as executive chairman and tech chief, and his fortune swings with Oracle's share price.
Then there's Trump. Fortune, citing the Wall Street Journal, reported in June 2026 that Ellison gave around $45 million to a nonprofit backing Trump's 2024 campaign. That report rests on people familiar with the matter, not a public filing. Back in 2020 his hosting of a Trump fundraiser prompted an Oracle staff walkout over the president's record on trans youth and climate, and that was the employees' complaint, not his words.
On the harm test, the honest answer is that we found no words of his own against LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants. What we did find is political money, a stake in the new US TikTok entity, and a 2024 pitch for constant AI camera surveillance, which privacy groups slammed. Whether you see that as a businessman backing his mates or as a man buying influence over what Americans read and watch is where you'll land.
His Israel giving is contested politics. Reports put his gifts to the Friends of the IDF at more than $25 million over the years, which supporters of Israel see as loyalty and critics of the war see as backing one side. The detail comes from secondary reporting we couldn't open, so we haven't put numbers on it.
On the good side, he signed the Giving Pledge and promised to give away 95 per cent of his wealth, mostly through his Ellison Institute of Technology at Oxford, aimed at health, food and climate. Critics note he gives through his own vehicles, not conventional charities, so the pledge is a promise more than a record so far.
Add it up and he isn't a villain on the evidence we could read. He is a very rich man whose money is moving into the places that shape the news and the politics, and we couldn't open the full articles to dig deeper. Too many open questions for a clean pass, not enough harm in his own words for a fail.