Larry Ellison’s Trump Proximity Play
Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison and US President Donald Trump share amusing as Ellison within the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC, the place they introduced the Stargate AI infrastructure venture.
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larry Ellison is not an ocean away from Donald Trump.
The 81-year-old Oracle cofounder—value $194 billion and ranked the world’s sixth richest person—has moved his main residence to Manalapan, Florida, roughly a 20-minute drive from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, based on beforehand unreported county data.
It wasn’t so way back that Ellison mentioned he had relocated to Lanai, the Hawaii island he purchased for $300 million in 2012 (it is now assessed at $1.2 billion). In a later 2020 electronic mail to Oracle workers, he wrote that he’d moved there full time.
That did not final. Now he is in Palm Beach County.
Ellison, now Oracle’s chief know-how officer and Paramount’s controlling shareholder, has a historical past of shopping for land in bulk. His $2.9 billion actual property portfolio consists of at the very least 4 houses in Woodside, California; 5 adjoining plots in Redwood City; 4 in Newport, Rhode Island; and roughly a dozen properties on Malibu’s Carbon Beach, two of which seem to have burned down in last year’s fires. On Lanai, I purchased just about all the things.
Florida appears totally different and positively extra strategic towards the backdrop of Ellison’s evolving relationship with the president. In 2020, he let Trump use his 250-acre Rancho Mirage property for a fundraiser (to the ire of some Oracle workers). “We only have one president at a time,” he told Forbes in 2020. “I don’t think he’s the devil—I support him and want him to do well.”
The following yr, Ellison bought his first property in Trump’s orbit, a sprawling North Palm Beach mansion with 200 ft of seaside entry, for $80 million. A yr later he set a Florida file, spending $173 million on a 16-acre, 60,000-square-foot compound within the 400-person barrier island city of Manalapan.
The nine-mile drive from President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago (inexperienced) to Ellison’s new everlasting residence (pink).
OpenStreetMap
That property is now declared his main residence. In April 2023, Ellison moved his voter registration to Florida, itemizing no celebration affiliation. A month later, he filed a declaration of domicile to maneuver his main residence from Lanai City to the Manalapan mansion. The transfer was not with out monetary penalties—good ones. By relocating earlier than promoting giant blocks of Oracle inventory and accumulating dividends, Ellison saved an estimated $1 billion in Hawaii state taxes.
Have a tip about Larry Ellison’s, or one other tech billionaire’s, relationship with President Trump? Contact Phoebe Liu at pliu@forbes.com and phoebe.789 on Signal.
YesSince 2023, Ellison has expanded his footprint in Palm Beach County. In 2024, he’ll spend $277 million on the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, including to his $1 billion portfolio of luxurious actual property. Last November, I bought Palm Beach County’s 600-acre Lion County Safari, first reported by The Real Deal. Between 2023 and mid-2025, entities tied to Ellison’s fundamental enterprise mailing handle quietly purchased up 9 nearly-adjacent residential houses in Palm Beach County’s Boynton Beach neighborhood for round $1 million every. It’s unclear what he plans to do with these purchases, which haven’t beforehand been reported.
Ellison’s jet journey signifies that he does certainly spend most of his time in Palm Beach County. Of 71 trackable flights in 2025, 50 of them began or led to Florida. None originated in Hawaii; the final trackable flight from Lanai was in late 2023.
Ellison has been renovating his Florida residence since 2022, based on Palm Beach County data: changing the buildings’ columns with metal, including new accent buildings, changing the property’s dock and boat raise and per an October doc, even initiating a contract with golf course builder Integrity Golf.
While Ellison has by no means donated on to Trump’s marketing campaign, their pursuits more and more intersect. Ellison appeared final yr on the White House to assist Trump announce his $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure initiative. Ellison and Trump helped dealer a deal that gave Oracle a 15% stake in TikTok’s US entity. Ellison and his son David—now Paramount’s controlling shareholders—have been reshaping their CBS community in a Trump-friendly means. (David, as soon as a Democratic donor, was Senator Lindsey Graham’s visitor to Trump’s State of the Union handle on Wednesday.) Meanwhile, the father-son duo is bidding—with Elder Ellison’s $40 billion private assure—pursuing a hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery and thus CNN.
Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property lies on the water’s edge in Palm Beach, Florida.
Steve Starr/CORBIS/Corbis through Getty Images
Policy alignment issues. And Oracle, which spent $11.5 million on lobbying final yr, stands to learn from friendlier AI information heart guidelines, export management selections and federal AI technique. The Federal Communications Commission, the place Trump is changing into more and more heavy-handed, did not approve the Ellisons’ Paramount takeover till the events selected some key pro-Trump concessions. Paramount is reportedly utilizing the Ellison household’s Trump ties to woo regulators; Trump hasn’t commented on the deal, however his administration helps—through a DOJ probe earlier this month into Netflix’s already-accepted bid for Warner Bros. and a letter on Wednesday from 11 pink state attorneys basic towards the Netflix deal. Such public motion hardly ever occurs with out negotiations in non-public. Mar-a-Lago, the place Trump spends a lot of his timeis the place numerous these conversations occur.
Giacomo Tognini contributed reporting.
