larry ellison co founded the software giant oracle corp orcl in 1977 under his leadership oracle grew from a start up with three programmers into the largest database software supplier and the second largest supplier of business applications 
oracle s rapid growth under ellison s leadership relied on his impressive track record in identifying and conquering new markets oracle also grew by acquiring other software companies including sun microsystems for 7 4 billion in 2010 and netsuite for 9 3 billion in 2016 12 since relinquishing the ceo post in 2014 ellison has served as chair of the board and chief technology officer alison czinkota investopediaearly life and educationborn in new york city in 1944 to an unmarried teenage mother ellison was adopted by his mother s aunt and uncle who raised him in chicago s south side after dropping out of the university of illinois and the university of chicago without a degree ellison spent almost a decade writing computer code for clients including tech companies ampex and amdahl where he worked on the first ibm compatible mainframe system notable accomplishmentsthe idea that launched oracle came to ellison while reading about relational databases in an ibm research paper that proposed a new way of organizing large volumes of data to make the information easy to access although ibm had not yet taken the idea out of the research stage ellison immediately saw the enormous commercial potential of relational databases to transform how enterprises operate 4in 1977 ellison and his former ampex colleagues bob miner and ed oates used 2 000 of their own money to found software development laboratories which later became oracle over the next two years ellison and his team built the first commercial structured query language sql for managing large relational databases 5key to their early success was winning a 50 000 contract from the u s central intelligence agency cia in 1978 to develop a relational database management system rdbms a project code named oracle when oracle 2 the first commercial relational database was released in 1979 the cia was among the earliest customers in renaming software development laboratories in 1983 ellison took the oracle name from this early contract for the cia 5after taking oracle public in 1986 ellison navigated the company through major turmoil including its first quarterly loss in 1990 and revelations about deceptive sales accounting that sank the share price the outlook improved in 1992 with the release of popular database software called oracle 7 which won over the market banks corporations governments airlines automakers and retailers all depended on oracle 7 despite the dot com bubble burst in the late 90s oracle s stock prices more than tripled from 1999 to the end of 2007 then continued climbing through the great financial crisis and the covid 19 pandemic 6another driver of oracle s growth under ellison s leadership was the series of strategic software acquisitions that allowed the company to enter new markets sun microsystems information technology hyperion solutions business intelligence retek retail siebel systems customer relationship management and peoplesoft human resources financial supply chain enterprise performance customer relationship management by 2020 ellison had positioned oracle s network architecture to handle the explosive growth of cloud based enterprise tech companies during the early days of the covid 19 pandemic lockdown in april 2020 zoom video communications inc zm the enterprise video communications leader chose oracle cloud infrastructure to support the increased demand for its services 7ellison has a record of outmaneuvering rivals by identifying and cornering new markets they overlooked in the 1980s when ibm began to develop sql software to compete with oracle he took advantage of the fact that the sql products that ibm was developing worked only with ibm servers ellison prioritized the emerging market for relational database systems that would run on any of the new computers targeting business and government users ellison was also one of the first to anticipate the revolutionary impact that the internet would have on the business world starting in 1997 ellison began to focus oracle exclusively on essential business software platforms for the internet it was a strategy that risked alienating customers unprepared for the shift yet it positioned the company to profit from the dot com boom by 2000 oracle was one of the biggest names in silicon valley and ellison briefly supplanted bill gates as the world s richest person 